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THE  MEANING  OF  GOD 
IN  HUMAN  EXPERIENCE 

A  PHILOSOPHIC  STUDY  OF  RELIGION 


BY 

WILLIAM  ERNEST  HOCKING,  PH.D. 

ALFORD   PROFESSOR   OF    NATURAL    RELIGION 

MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  AND  CIVIL  POLITY 

IN   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


NEW  HAVEN  •  YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON   •   HUMPHREY  MILFORD   •   OXFORD   UNIVERSITY   PRESS 


COPYRIGHT,  1912 
BY  YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


First  published  June,  1912 
Second  printing  May,  1913 
Third  printing  June,  1916 
Fourth  printing  August,  1922 
Fifth  printing  October,  1923 
Sixth  printing  April,  1924 
Seventh  printing  January,  1928 
Eighth  printing  May,  1934 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 

All  rights  reserved.  This  book  may  not  be  reproduced,  in 
whole  or  in  part,  in  any  form  (except  by  reviewers  for  the 
public  press),  without  written  permission  from  the  publishers. 


NOTE  ON  CLASSIFICATION 

According  to  Dewey's  Decimal  System 

Main  Topics 

201  (Philosophy  and  Psychology  of  Religion)  + 
121  (Theory  of  Knowledge)  +  149.3  (Mysticism) 
+  149.9  (Pragmatism). 

Sub-topics 

Creativity  (155);  Worship  (248,  264);  Philosophy 
of  History  (901). 


TO 
A.  B.  O'R.  H. 

AN  UNFAILING  SOURCE   OF  INSIGHT 


M521483 


PREFACE 

services  of  thought  to  religion  have  been  sub- 
-L  ject  to  a  justified  distrust.  Of  uncertain  worth, 
especially  of  uncertain  recoil,  are  the  labors  of  reason  in 
behalf  of  any  of  our  weightier  human  interests.  By  right 
instinct  has  religion  from  the  beginning  looked  elsewhere 
for  the  brunt  of  support  and  defense —  say  to  revela- 
tion, to  faith,  to  feeling.  A  bad  defense  is  a  betrayal ; 
and  what  human  philosophy  of  religion  can  be  better 
than  a  bad  defense  ? 

Present-day  philosophy  seems  notably  inclined  to  take 
this  view  of  itself.  Is  it  not  Bradley,  elder  metaphysician 
to  our  time,  who  jots  down  that  metaphysics  is  the 
finding  of  bad  reasons  for  what  we  believe  on  instinct? 
Reason  is  not  incapable  of  recognizing  and  confessing 
its  own  limits :  it  may  even  take  pride  in  expounding 
them,  an  attitude  which  since  Hume  and  Kant  has  be- 
come more  or  less  fashionable.  Our  current  science  of 
religion  may  now  assume  without  too  much  discussion 
that  the  grounds  of  religion  are  super-rational,  or  sub- 
rational  :  and  we  find  philosophy  undertaking  to  define 
what  these  other-than-rational  grounds  are  —  grounds 
moral  perhaps,  or  psychological,  or  social,  or  historical; 
grounds  pragmatic,  or  even  mystic.  Various  and  vari- 
ously combined  as  are  these  several  philosophic  trends, 
they  agree  in  accepting  the  judgment  that  religion  lies 
close  to  the  primitive  moving-forces  of  life :  deeper,  then, 
than  reason  or  any  work  of  reason. 


vi  PREFACE 

But  a  vague  territory  still  is  this  Beyond-reason  or 
Deeper-than-reason.  Once  singly-named  Faith,  now  it 
has  many  names  —  instinct,  the  subconscious,  the  co- 
conscious,  feeling,  will,  value-judgment,  social  sense,  in- 
tuition, mystic  reason,  perhaps  Velan  vital  —  as  its  bor- 
der is  touched  in  various  scientific  excursions.  Some 
unclearness  has  come  with  the  abundance  of  our  learning, 
some  confusion  of  categories,  no  doubt ;  we  can  hardly 
yet  say  that  we  know  better  than  our  forefathers  what 
religion  is,  though  perhaps  we  know  better  what  it  is 
not.  The  one  impression  which  does  distinctly  emerge 
from  the  multitude  of  contemporary  suggestions  is  a 
negative  one :  a  general  disaffection  from  the  religion 
of  reason,  and  from  its  philosophical  framework,  abso- 
lute idealism. 

Some  doubt  the  fundamental  proposition  of  this  ideal- 
ism, namely,  that  all  reality  is  of  the  same  stuff  that 
ideas  are  made  of,  that  "whatever  is  is  rational."  Some 
doubt  its  doctrine  that  everything  is  known  to  one  abso- 
lute Knower,  whose  being  is  thought,  or  Idea.  And 
some  there  are  who  do  not  doubt  these  propositions; 
who  will  not  deny  logical  force,  even  finality,  to  ideal- 
istic arguments  —  if  one  must  argue :  but  who  add  the 
comment  that  whatever  is  vital  in  religion  is  missed  in 
all  logic-work,  is  necessarily  and  forever  missed,  thought 
and  religion  being  once  for  all  incommensurate.  They 
do  not  find  the  Absolute  of  idealism  identical  with  the 
God  of  religion :  they  cannot  worship  the  Absolute.  And 
they  do  not  find  that  religion  consists  in  our  human 
knowledge  of  this  absolute  Knower:  Denken,  they 
think,  ist  nicht  Gottesdienst. 

In  this  general  dissatisfaction  with  idealism,  and  in  our 


PREFACE  Tii 

unclear  efforts  to  win  elsewhere  a  positive  groundwork 
for  religion,  I  find  the  sufficient  warrant  for  such  a  study 
as  this  book  undertakes.  It  enquires  what,  in  terms  of 
experience,  its  God  means  and  has  meant  to  mankind  (for 
surely  religion  rises  out  of  experience  and  pays  back 
into  it  again) :  and  it  proposes,  by  aid  of  the  labors  of 
all  co-workers,  critics  and  criticised  alike,  to  find  the 
foundations  of  this  religion,  whether  within  reason  or 

O  ' 

beyond. 

This  purpose  is  not  over-bold ;  though  no  serious  treat- 
ment of  religion  dare  be  over-modest.  It  is  not  over- 
bold, first,  because  it  is  a  human  necessity.  We  must 
reach  some  working  clarity  in  these  matters,  every  indi- 
vidual soul  of  us :  the  problem  is  there ;  we  shall  work 
it  through  well  or  ill,  get  our  solution  honorably  or  by 
default.  Is  there  not  in  all  positive  living  a  similar  ne- 
cessity for  what  we  may  call  presumption  ?  The  world 
too  is  there,  with  work  to  be  done,  votes  to  be  cast,  a 
new  generation  to  be  trained  and  harnessed,  and  other 
like  requirements  —  all  equally  impossible.  All  such  un- 
dertakings might  well  be  postponed  by  any  man  under 
the  true  plea  of  unfitness  :  nevertheless  all  this  is  to  be 
done,  and  all  will  get  itself  done  in  some  fashion,  cred- 
itable or  discreditable.  It  is,  in  fact,  an  old  ruse  of  na- 
ture's, this  of  clothing  the  necessary  in  the  guise  of  the 
impossible,  making  a  dignified  way  of  escape  for  him 
who  prefers  to  escape  from  complete  living,  calling  for 
something  like  presumption  on  the  part  of  him  who  will 
not  escape.  Let  us  rather  say,  calling  for  performance 
simply,  categorical  performance.  Nature  creates  the  re- 
quirement :  let  nature  supply  ways  and  means. 


viii  PREFACE 

Our  purpose  is  not  over-bold,  secondly,  because,  after 
all,  the  truth  about  religion  cannot  be  in  itself  obscure 
or  intricate.  Sub  tie  religion  is  false  religion.  Our  diffi- 
culties are  indeed  made  by  our  laboring  philosophies 
themselves.  The  quaint  words  of  Berkeley  still  hold 
good :  "  We  havefirft  raifed  a  duft  and  then  complain 
we  cannot  fee."  The  truth  about  religion  is  to  be  had; 
but  not  by  surpassing  others  in  more  mighty  flounder- 
ing and  dust-raising:  this  truth  is  traditionally  for  "him 
that  hath  eyes  to  see  and  ears  to  hear "  in  a  certain 
quietude  of  mind. 

Only  —  be  it  at  once  said — the  dust-raising  in  the 
present  case  is  a  much  more  important  process  than  the 
words  of  Berkeley  imply.  In  the  new  philosophies  is  new 
truth,  and  much  of  it  —  no  mere  new  misunderstanding. 
Whatever  murkiness  there  is  marks,  I  believe,  a  genuine 
deepening  of  spiritual  consciousness  in  our  Western 
world :  a  new  appreciation  of  faith,  a  new  love  of  life 
and  its  variety,  a  new  ability  to  be  both  bond  and  free  — 
speculatively,  spiritually,  free,  while  not  less  scientifically 
bond,  historically  bond,  even  traditionally  bond.  It  is 
a  symptom  of  any  such  valid  deepening  of  thought  that 
men  know  less  clearly  what  they  want  than  what  they 
do  not  want.  The  older  philosophy  has  failed  to  satisfy; 
the  newer  philosophies  have  not  yet  succeeded  in  satisfy- 
ing :  the  work  of  proposing  and  rejecting  must  continue 
until  conscience  at  its  profounder  level  can  again  rest. 

It  is  just  because  of  this  veritable  growth  that  clever- 
ness and  erudition  poured  out  in  abundance  do  nowa- 
days visibly  pall  and  fail  of  their  usual  effect :  for  clever- 
ness and  erudition  operate  within  the  already  acquired 
conceptions  of  mankind  —  they  stand  ineffective  before 


PREFACE  ix 

what  is  new-born.  For  this  reason,  in  part,  the  weighty 
scholarship  of  Germany  loses  some  little  ground  in  these 
fields.  If  we  know  the  kind  of  thing  that  a  given  type 
of  scholarship  has  to  offer,  then  even  great  virtuosity, 
though  it  be  prolific  of  the  Very  True,  must  sweat  to 
provoke  an  interest,  still  more  to  arouse  our  faith.  The 
thing  now  required  is  a  simple  thing,  a  common  word, 
a  slight  increment  of  ultimate  sincerity  somewhere  that 
can  reunite  our  roots  with  mother  earth.  We  are  as 
well  off  above  ground  as  we  can  be  until  we  are  better 
off  below  ground.  What  boots  it  though  a  man  can  pro- 
duce out  of  his  inner  consciousness  a  veritable  banyan 
forest  if  there  is,  in  all,  no  growth  downward  ?  There  is, 
I  say,  a  quiet  and  canny  maturity  of  conscience  abroad 
which  knows  surely  what  it  does  not  want,  a  new-born 
thing  in  the  world,  the  source  of  our  new  philosophies, 
—  in  particular  of  our  pragmatisms,  our  realisms,  our 
mysticisms,  —  the  doom  of  the  old,  the  doom  also  of  the 
new  that  fail  to  arrive  at  reality :  the  lash  at  the  back 
of  the  thinker,  and  the  hope  in  his  soul. 

Meanwhile,  the  general  deepening  of  consciousness, 
and  of  conscience,  is  a  deepening  of  religion  itself.  The 
formulae  that  were  once  potent  here  too  begin  to  fail : 
ideas  and  phrases,  gritty  a  generation  ago,  a  decade  ago, 
are  already  worn  smooth  and  lend  no  more  friction  to 
any  human  work.  A  new  calling  has  sprung  up  :  that 
of  creed-making,  or  of  creed  phrase-making ;  and  many 
of  our  wise  men  take  part  in  it.  These  too  have  their 
new  Reality  to  face,  merciless  as  a  child.  If  the  spirit 
of  the  age  is  but  feebly  responsive  to  new  phrase  or  old, 
hasten  not  to  judge  that  the  spirit  of  the  age  is  becom- 
ing irreligious  :  may  not  the  opposite  theory  as  well  ex' 


x  PREFACE 

plain  its  indifference  to  us  (though  with  less  salve  for 
our  vanity)  ?  Potentially,  at  least,  men  are  becoming 
more  religious.  This  development  of  religion  is  still  a 
latent  fact,  mightier  than  any  yet-visible  shape  or  move- 
ment, discernible  at  times  only  as  a  cloud  dim  and  vast, 
strained  and  full  of  repressed  lightning.  The  release  of 
these  forces  is  no  small  human  object. 

In  what  respect,  then,  is  idealism  inadequate  to  these 
new  demands  ?  And  what  is  the  truth  which  the  critics 
of  idealism  have  to  offer  ?  It  may  be  well  to  state  at 
once  (especially  for  the  satisfaction  of  fellow-students  in 
these  fields)  the  substance  of  our  belief  on  these  points, 
outlining  in  rough  summary  the  position  in  which  the 
work  of  this  book  results. 

The  weakness  in  the  armor  of  classical  idealism  has 
been  made  apparent,  I  believe,  by  pragmatism  —  or 
rather,  by  the  pragmatic  principle  of  judgment.  Ideal- 
ism does  not  do  the  work  of  religious  truth  ;  ergo,  it 
is  not  the  truth  of  religion.  This  judgment  may  be  ac- 
cepted without  further  commitment  to  the  philosophy 
that  pronounces  it  (for  is  it  not  also  Hegel's  principle 
that  the  true  idea  is  known  by  its  work  in  this  concrete 
world  ? ) 

Idealism  fails  to  work,  I  believe,  chiefly  because  it  is 
unfinished.  Unfinishedness  is  not  in  itself  a  blemish  ; 
is  professed  even  as  a  special  excellence  by  that  remark- 
able antisystemist,  Henri  Bergson.1  But  there  are  tol- 
erable and  intolerable  kinds  of  unfinishedness.  A  thing 
is  properly  unfinished  when  it  is  finishable  ;  when  it  has 
an  identity  that  finishing  will  not  change.  Let  an  artist 

1  Involution  crdatrice,  p.  209. 


PREFACE  ri 

sketch  a  face  with  all  conceivable  haste  and  roughness: 
the  unfinishedness  of  the  thing  is  wholly  justified  if 
only  it  is  a  thing ;  if  only  it  has  a  character  and  a  sig- 
nificance which  all  later  finishing  does  but  develop  with- 
out displacement  or  substitution.  Our  philosophies  must 
meet  the  same  test.  Idealism  can  entertain  much  of 
what  pragmatism,  realism,  and  the  rest  have  brought 
forward,  and  still  remain  idealism ;  whether  it  can  en- 
tertain all,  is  doubtful.  It  is  not  incapable  of  admitting 
into  its  world-picture  variety,  change,  growth,  person- 
ality, freedom,  also  objectivity  of  a  sort.  The  question 
is,  of  what  sort? — whether  the  variety  is  a  real  variety, 
the  risk  a  real  risk,  the  objectivity  a  real  objectivity, 
individuality  and  freedom  real  —  or  only  shows  of  re- 
ality, infected  by  that  illusoriness  and  approximateness 
which  idealism  tends  to  impose  upon  realistic  experi- 
ence generally.  Can  idealism  entertain  the  Real,  and 
still  remain  idealism  ?  What  pragmatism  has  specifically 
required  of  idealism  in  religion  is  more  genuinely  real 
opportunity,  real  freedom,  real  individual  creativity. 
What  realism  desires  is  more  valid  objectivity,  substan- 
tiality in  the  world  beyond  self.  It  is  the  latter  want, 
I  venture  to  say,  which  chiefly  limits  the  effectiveness 
of  idealism  in  religion  :  to  satisfy  the  pragmatic  test, 
idealism  must  become  more  realistic  :  for  idealism  in  reli- 
gion does  not  give  sufficient  credence  to  the  authoritative 
Object,  shows,  so  far,  no  adequate  comprehension  of 
the  attitude  of  worship. 

Idealism  is  unfinished,  then,  not  having  found  its 
way  to  worship  :  it  has  not  found  its  way  to  the  par- 
ticular and  the  historical  in  religion  ;  to  the  authorita- 
tive and  the  wholly  super-personal.  The  salvation  it 


xii  PREFACE 

offers  men  seems  still  to  be,  in  effect,  a  salvation  from 
the  particular  in  the  general,  the  ideal:  even  though 
it  names  the  concrete  as  its  goal,  it  has  not  yet  been 
able  in  this  matter  of  religion  to  accomplish  union  with 
the  concrete.  It  might  seem  that  the  idealist  more  than 
any  other  should  appreciate  the  function  of  the  positive 
and  authoritative  in  religion ;  should  know  (as  Hegel 
knew)  that  only  the  concrete  can  breed  the  concrete; 
should  know  (as  Royce  knows)  that  only  the  individual 
can  breed  the  individual ;  should  know,  then,  that  only 
the  historic  can  bear  fruit  in  history,  so  that  when  the 
pragmatic  test  comes,  a  religion  which  is  but  a  religion- 
in-general,  a  religion  universal  but  not  particular,  a  reli- 
gion of  idea,  not  organically  rooted  in  passion,  fact,  and 
institutional  life,  must  fail. 

Idealism  means,  in  name  and  in  truth,  the  freedom  in 
this  universe  of  the  thinker,  the  unlimited  right  of  Idea 
in  a  world  where  nothing  that  is  is  ultimately  irrational. 
But  it  is  the  exercise  of  freedom  which  alone  discovers 
the  rightful  place  of  authority.  Only  he  who  has  tried  (or 
tried  to  imagine)  a  pure  adventure  knows  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  pure  adventure  ;  for  when  you  have  can- 
celled path,  peak,  sky,  star,  all  distinguishable  points  in 
space,  the  adventure  itself  is  abolished.  The  idealist 
who  by  right  and  intention  is  the  pure  adventurer  in 
the  regions  of  the  spirit  has  not  yet  experimented  his 
freedom  if  he  remains  unappreciative  of  authority,  in 
religion  as  in  knowledge.  It  is  he  who  in  the  end  must 
be  called  upon  to  expound  the  worth  and  use  of  church, 
dogma,  creed,  priest,  mediator,  the  whole  apparatus  of 
God- worship  which  religious  evolution  has  produced,  and 
God-worship  itself. 


PREFACE  xiii 

If  idealism  declines  this  responsibility,  as  being  be- 
yond its  province,  beyond  reason  in  fact,  belonging  to 
the  practical,  or  psychological,  or  anthropological,  or 
historical  aspect  of  the  matter  only,  it  does  thereby  ac- 
knowledge the  foundations  of  religion  to  be  beyond 
reason ;  implies  that  to  comprehend  the  truth  of  religion, 
idealism  must  at  last  abandon  itself. 

The  pragmatic  test  has  meant  much  in  our  time  as  a 
principle  of  criticism,  in  awakening  the  philosophic  con- 
science to  the  simple  need  of  fruitfulness  and  moral  ef- 
fect as  a  voucher  of  truth.  It  is  this  critical  pragmatism 
which  first  and  widely  appeals  to  the  intellectual  con- 
science at  large.  Negative  pragmatism,  I  shall  call  it  : 
whose  principle  is,  "  That  which  does  not  work  is  not 
true."  The  corresponding  positive  principle,  ".What- 
ever works  is  true,"  I  regard  as  neither  valid  nor  use- 
ful. But  invaluable  as  a  guide  do  I  find  this  negative 
test:  if  a  theory  has  no  consequences,  or  bad  ones;  if  it 
makes  no  difference  to  men,  or  else  undesirable  differ- 
ences ;  if  it  lowers  the  capacity  of  men  to  meet  the  stress 
of  existence,  or  diminishes  the  worth  to  them  of  what 
existence  they  have ;  such  a  theory  is  somehow  false,  and  we 
have  no  peace  until  it  is  remedied.  I  will  even  go  farther, 
and  say  that  a  theory  is  false  if  it  is  not  interesting :  a 
proposition  that  falls  on  the  mind  so  dully  as  to  excite 
no  enthusiasm  has  not  attained  the  level  of  truth  ;  though 
the  words  be  accurate  the  import  has  leaked  away  from 
them,  and  the  meaning  is  not  conveyed.  Any  such  cri- 
terion of  truth  is  based  upon  a  conviction  or  thesis  other- 
wise founded,  that  the  real  world  is  infinitely  charged 
with  interest  and  value,  whereby  any  commonplaceness 


xir  PREFACE 

on  our  part  is  evidence  of  a  lack  of  grasp.  Upon  this 
basis  (not  apart  from  it),  a  negative  pragmatism  must  be 
an  effective  instrument  of  knowledge. 

This  instrument  is  nowhere  so  significant  as  in  the 
field  of  religious  knowledge.  What  difference  is  made 
to  you  (and  necessarily  made  to  you)  by  your  equipment 
of  religious  ideas  and  beliefs?  If  they  are  powerless, 
they  are  false.  Whatever  doctrine  tends  to  draw  the 
fangs  of  reality,  and  to  leave  men  unstung,  content, 
complacent,  and  at  ease,  —  that  doctrine  is  a  treachery 
and  a  deceit.  Note  well  that  it  is  not  pleasantness  but 
force  that  sets  the  mark  for  truth :  we  have  to  require 
of  our  faith  not  what  is  agreeable  to  the  indolent  spirit 
but  what  is  at  once  a  spur  and  a  promise.  What  do  you 
think  of  hell?  The  doctrine  of  hell  made  religion  at 
one  time  a  matter  of  first-rate  importance  :  getting  your 
soul  saved  made  a  difference  in  your  empirical  destiny. 
If  your  idealism  wipes  out  your  fear  of  hell,  and  with  it 
all  sense  of  infinite  risk  in  the  conduct  of  life,  your 
idealism  has  played  you  false.  Truth  must  be  transformed  ; 
but  the  transformation  of  truth  must  be  marked  by  a 
conservation  of  power  ;  herewith  we  have  a  more  defi- 
nite expression  for  the  positive  basis  of  our  negative 
pragmatism.  No  religion,  then,  is  a  true  religion  which 
is  not  able  to  make  men  tingle,  yes,  even  to  their  phys- 
ical nerve  tips,  with  the  sense  of  an  infinite  hazard,  a 
wrath  to  come,  a  heavenly  city  to  be  gained  or  lost  in 
the  process  of  time  and  by  the  use  of  our  freedom.  The 
flesh  and  blood  of  historical  contingencies  cannot  be 
sapped  up  in  the  timeless  issues  of  a  certain  type  of 
idealism  without  loss  of  power,  hence  loss  of  truth. 

What,  again,  do  you  think  of  God  ?     The  God  of 


PREFACE  xv 

orthodoxy  is  thought  of  as  being  so  far  like  man  as  to 
have  loves,  interests,  and  powers  which  make  themselves 
temporally  felt:  this  God  does  things  in  the  world 
which,  if  we  like,  we  may  call  miracles  or,  if  we  like  bet- 
ter, deeds  of  Providence.  Upon  this  differential  work 
of  God,  as  contrasted  with  his  total  work,  was  based 
much  of  the  urgency  of  former  religious  observance, 
prayer,  and  piety.  Pragmatism  rightly  enquires  what 
becomes  of  this  differential  work  when  God  becomes 
the  All-One  of  idealism;  and  what,  if  the  historical  will 
of  God  and  the  acts  of  Providence  disappear  from  our 
creed,  is  to  replace  the  immediacy  and  pervasiveness  of 
the  religious  interest  which  those  theories  encouraged, 
and  which  in  themselves  (though  not  in  all  bearings) 
were  good.  In  such  wise,  the  pragmatic  principle  tends 
to  confront  idealism,  as  it  has  never  before  been  con- 
fronted, with  the  substantial  values  of  orthodoxy ;  com- 
pelling idealism  to  complete  itself  by  the  standard  of 
these  values  (I  do  not  say,  of  these  propositions),  even 
if  at  the  cost  of  its  philosophic  identity. 

This  is  the  type  of  service  which  pragmatism  can  well 
render.  As  a  positive  builder  it  has  little  to  recommend 
it.  Founding  truth  ultimately  on  our  human  value  is 
but  another  attempt,  more  radical  than  that  of  ideal- 
ism, at  the  "  pure  adventure" :  it  is  an  idealism  become 
more  subjective,  freedom  less  bound  by  authority.  It  is 
the  function  of  the  pragmatic  test  (as  of  pain  and  dis- 
comfort generally)  to  point  out  something  wrong ;  the 
work  of  discovering  what  is  right  must  be  done  bv  other 

O  o  J 

means.  Knowledge  may  be  obliged  to  wait  long  in  a 
notch  well  known  to  be  tentative  and  unsatisfactory 


XVI 


PREFACE 


because  the  satisfactory  thing  cannot  be  found  as  truth 
requires.  I  do  not  say  that  action  must  wait.  Decision 
has  its  hour;  and  if  knowledge  is  absent,  the  will-to- 
believe  must  come  into  play :  but  the  will-to-believe  is 
precisely  a  principle  for  action,  not  for  knowledge.  It 
has  no  place  in  the  age-long  work  of  speculation.  The 
adoption  of  an  hypothesis  as  a  working-theory  or  postu- 
late does  not  conceal  from  the  adopter  its  true  nature ; 
does  not  obliterate  for  him  the  difference  between  postu- 
late and  knowledge. 

But  is  there,  then,  no  inaccessible  truth ?  no  perma- 
nent gap  in  knowledge  (such  as  religious  truth  might 
hold),  to  be  filled  up  by  choice  ?  There  is  no  inaccessible 
truth.  If  any  object  has  possible  bearing  on  human  in- 
terests, such  as  to  make  it  matter  of  choice,  it  has  a 
bearing  on  human  fact  also — there  is  some  cognitive 
way  to  it.  Truth  is  indeed  variously  accessible :  there 
are  regions  of  the  world  unsounded,  long  to  be  unsound- 
able,  ample  playground  for  imagination  ;  but  in  truth- 
getting  these  very  regions  are  to  be  approached  (and  are 
approached)  with  a  more  delicate  chivalry  just  because 
of  their  comparative  helplessness  —  with  more  care,  not 
less,  to  restrain  the  impulses  of  subjectivity. 

But,  at  last,  is  there  no  unfinished  truth  ?  No  reality 
yet  unmade,  or  in  the  making  ;  no  chance  to  co-operate 
with  God  in  the  work  of  creation,  in  determining  what 
truth  shall  be?  Have  we  not  here  the  real  meaning  of 
positive  pragmatism,  and  its  true  significance  in  religion  ? 
The  world  is  infinitely  unfinished ;  here  lies  the  oppor- 
tunity of  freedom,  the  only  excuse,  indeed,  for  time- 
existence  at  all.  But  of  the  world,  too,  we  can  define  a 
tolerable  and  an  intolerable  unfinishedness :  the  world 


PREFACE  xrii 

must  have  an  identity  which  the  work  of  finishing  does 
not  destroy  or  from  moment  to  moment  displace.  Un- 
limited co-operation  with  God  in  world-making  we  have ; 
not,  however,  in  ultimate  God-making.  The  religious 
object  offers  that  identity  without  which  creative  free- 
dom itself  would  lack,  for  us,  all  meaning.  Does  it  seem 
that  super-nature  is  the  plastic  part  of  reality,  nature 
relatively  unplastic  ?  —  toward  nature  must  we  be 
relatively  empirical,  passive ;  toward  super-nature  rel- 
atively self-assertive,  creative?  I  venture  to  point  out 
that  our  creativity  in  any  field  follows  faithfully  the 
character  of  our  passivity  in  that  same  field,  varies  with 
it  not  inversely  but  directly.  Here,  where  our  subserv- 
ience to  objective  fact  is  most  massive,  here  in  the 
world  of  sense  and  nature,  our  practical  creations  are 
most  massive  also.  And  there,  in  the  world  of  the  reli- 
gious objects,  where  myth-making,  and  world-picturing, 
even  God-character-building,  are  most  exuberant, — 
there  the  firm  steadfastness  of  objective  reality  is  at  its 
summit  also.  An  ultimate  empiricism,  a  deference  to 
what  is  given,  not  makable,  just  in  these  regions  of 
the  supersensible  and  the  supernatural,  is  an  attitude 
wholly  necessary  to  human  dignity,  and  to  true  religion. 
Far  less  than  absolute  idealism  is  positive  pragmatism 
(radically  taken)  capable  of  worship. 

If  we  are  right  in  this,  it  may  appear  that  pragma- 
tism, taken  in  a  constructive  sense,  is  a  self -refuting  the- 
ory. The  only  kind  of  truth  which  in  the  end  can  com- 
ply with  the  pragmatic  requirement  that  power  shall  be 
conserved  is  a  non-pragmatic  truth,  a  truth  which  has 
an  absolute  aspect;  which  proposition  we  shall  try  to 
make  good  in  the  course  of  this  treatise.  Pragmatism 


rviii  PREFACE 

is  a  philosophy  which  cannot  be  finished  without  des- 
troying its  identity. 

Whatever  may  be  the  deficiencies  of  idealism,  prag- 
matism, if  we  are  right,  cannot  supply  them.  How  may 
it  be  with  mysticism  ?  Mysticism  may  have  its  absolute  : 
but  mysticism  finds  its  metaphysics  in  experience ;  and 
mysticism  is  no  stranger  to  worship.  I  believe,  in  fact, 
that  the  requirements  both  of  reason  and  of  beyond- 
reason  may  be  met  in  what  mysticism,  rightly  understood, 
may  contribute  to  idealism.  Not  every  mysticism  will  do. 
It  is  not  the  "  speculative  mysticism  "  of  the  text-books 
that  we  want ;  it  is  mysticism  as  a  practice  of  union  with 
God,  together  with  the  theory  of  that  practice.  Mys- 
ticism may  introduce  idealism  to  the  religious  deed, 
ultimately  thereby  to  the  particular  and  authoritative 
in  religion. 

There  are  mysticisms  in  which  none  of  us  believe. 
There  is  the  mysticism  of  mantic  and  theurgy  —  mysti- 
cism of  supernatural  exploit,  seeking  short-cut  to  personal 
goods.  There  is  another  mysticism  equally  remote  from 
our  affections :  world-avoiding,  illusion-casting,  zero- 
worshipping  mysticism;  living  (in  self-contradiction) 
upon  the  fruits  of  a  rejected  life.  This  mysticism  has 
given  the  name  its  current  color:  making  it  necessary, 
perhaps,  to  ask  that  we  be  understood  and  agreed  to- 
gether in  rejecting  it.  From  the  standpoint  of  just  this 
sound  disparagement  of  these  types  of  mysticism,  I  have 
become  persuaded  that  there  is  another,  even  a  neces- 
sary mysticism.  A  mysticism  as  important  as  dangerous ; 
whose  historical  aberrations  are  but  tokens  of  its  power. 
It  is  this  mysticism  which  lends  to  life  that  value  which 


PREFACE  rix 

is  beyond  reach  of  fact,  and  that  creativity  which  is  be- 
yond the  docility  of  reason ;  which  neither  denies  nor  is 
denied  by  the  results  of  idealism  or  the  practical  works 
of  life,  but  supplements  both,  and  constitutes  the  essen- 
tial standpoint  of  religion. 

The  mystic  finds  the  absolute  in  immediate  experience. 
Whatever  is  mediated  is  for  him  not  yet  the  real  which 
he  seeks.  This  means  to  some  that  the  mystic  rejects  all 
mediators  :  the  implication  is  mistaken.  To  say  that  a 
mediator  is  not  the  finality  is  not  to  say  that  a  mediator 
is  nothing.  The  self-knowing  mystic,  so  far  from  reject- 
ing mediators,  makes  all  things  mediators  in  their  own 
measure.  To  all  particulars  he  denies  the  name  God,  — 
to  endow  them  with  the  title  of  mediator  between  himself 
and  God.  Thus  it  is  that  the  mystic,  representing  the 
truth  of  religious  practice,  may  teach  idealism  the  way 
to  worship,  and  give  it  connection  with  particular  and 
historic  religion. 

I  have  thus  sketched,  in  highly  crude  and  unmodified 
manner,  the  general  philosophic  attitude  of  this  book. 
The  philosophies  of  the  present  time,  when  they  attain 
their  own  free  conclusion,  complete  themselves  in  the 
same  point.  Pure  thought,  and  pure  voluntarism,  share 
the  fate  of  the  "  pure  adventure  "  :  they  must  find  rest 
in  something  other,  limiting  their  freedom,  yet  required 
by  it.  It  is  the  finished  pragmatist  who  best  knows  the 
need  of  the  absolute.  It  is  the  finished  mystic  who  best 
knows  the  need  of  active  life  and  its  mediation.  It  is  the 
finished  idealist  who  best  knows  the  need  of  the  real- 
istic elements  of  experience;  the  mystical  and  author- 
itative elements  of  faith.  I  know  not  what  name  to 


XX 


PREFACE 


give  to  this  point  of  convergence,  nor  does  name  much 
matter:  it  is  realism,  it  is  mysticism,  it  is  idealism  also, 
its  identity,  I  believe,  not  broken.  For  in  so  far  as  ideal- 
ism announces  the  liberty  of  thought,  the  spirituality  of 
the  world,  idealism  is  but  another  name  for  philosophy 
—  all  philosophy  is  idealism.  It  is  only  the  radical  ideal- 
ist who  is  able  to  give  full  credit  to  the  realistic,  the 
naturalistic,  even  the  materialistic  aspects  of  the  world 
he  lives  in. 

So  much  it  has  seemed  right  to  say,  by  way  of  gen- 
eral philosophic  orientation  and  confession.  But  in  the 
work  of  the  book  itself  no  interest  is  taken  in  the  criti- 
cism of  thought-systems  for  their  own  sakes;  our  inter- 
est there  is  in  the  substance  and  worth  of  religion,  to 
be  found  by  whatever  instruments  of  thought  may  be 
at  hand. 

As  to  the  plan  to  be  followed,  I  shall  accept  the  prag- 
matic question,  What  does  religion  do?  as  a  way  of 
leading  into  the  study  of  what  religion  is.  In  any  case, 
religion  must  be  understood  and  judged  largely  by  what 
it  accomplishes,  by  the  difference  it  makes  in  human  af- 
fairs. If  we  can  at  the  beginning  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
sort  of  result  which  religion  naturally  achieves  in  history 
and  in  personal  life,  though  only  by  way  of  a  working 
hypothesis,  we  shall  have  a  valuable  guide  for  further 
enquiry  into  the  nature  of  religion. 

In  taking  up  this  enquiry,  the  second  part  of  the  book 
considers  with  some  thoroughness  the  motives  which 
have  led  to  the  retirement  of  reason  in  religion,  and  at 
the  same  time  to  a  growing  confidence  in  the  worth  of 
feeling.  By  deepening  our  conception  of  feeling  we  find 


PREFACE  rri 

that  our  anti-intellectual  tendencies  can  be  funded  for 
the  most  part  in  the  "religion  of  feeling";  and  in  com- 
ing to  terms  with  that  view  of  religion  we  solve  many 
of  our  problems  at  once.  The  issue  of  this  enquiry  turns 
largely  upon  reaching  a  new  understanding  (chapter  xi) 
of  the  actual  working-connection  in  consciousness  be- 
tween ideas  and  feelings.  It  will  appear  in  what  way  the 
value  of  religion  depends  upon  the  religious  idea  and 
its  truth. 

Hereupon  it  would  be  in  order  to  pass  at  once  to  the 
question  of  the  truth  of  religious  ideas,  and  especially 
of  the  idea  of  God  as  the  central  idea  of  religion.  But 
here,  too,  it  seems  permissible  first  to  build  up  our  idea 
of  God  pragmatically,  by  considering  in  a  series  of  free 
meditations  (part  three)  what  interest  we  may  have,  hu- 
manly speaking,  in  the  unity  of  our  world,  in  the  pres- 
ence there  of  anything  changeless  and  absolute,  and  in 
the  existence  of  a  personal  deity. 

It  is  the  work  of  the  following  part  to  deal  directly 
with  the  question,  how  men  know  God;  to  show  how 
God  is  found  in  human  experience  at  large,  and  how  this 
knowledge  develops  in  the  specifically  religious  experi- 
ence of  mankind.  It  is  maintained  (in  chapters  xix  to 
xxi)  that  our  knowledge  of  fellow-men  depends  upon 
an  original  knowledge  of  God ;  not  our  knowledge  of 
God  upon  a  prior  knowledge  of  our  social  world.  But 
these  two  aspects  of  our  spiritual  experience  do  develop 
each  one  the  other,  according  to  a  principle  of  alterna- 
tion which  is  expounded  in  the  ensuing  part  (part  five), 
dealing  with  mysticism  and  worship. 

It  now  becomes  possible  (part  six)  to  set  down  in  more 
adequate  form  what  was  taken  as  the  beginning  of  onr 


mi  PREFACE 

study,  namely,  the  work  of  God  in  the  world,  the  way 
in  which  religion  becomes  fruitful  in  history,  in  morals, 
in  the  arts,  and  in  the  conquest  of  pain  and  evil.  There 
is  no  creativity  in  human  life  without  the  Absolute  as 
one  party  thereto. 

If  I  have  taken  frequent  occasion  in  this  book  to 
express  dissent  from  the  views  both  of  Professor  Royce 
and  of  William  James,  it  is  but  a  sign  of  the  extent  to 
which  I  owe  to  them,  my  honored  masters  in  these  mat- 
ters, the  groundwork  of  my  thinking.  I  have  differed 
freely  from  both,  in  the  spirit  of  their  own  instruction, 
but  not  without  the  result  of  finding  myself  at  one  with 
both  in  greater  measure  than  I  would  once  have  thought 
possible — or  logically  proper! 

Most  of  the  work  of  criticizing  the  original  drafts  of 
this  book,  and  many  an  idea  for  their  improvement,  I 
owe  to  my  wife:  in  so  far  as  the  path  of  the  reader  has 
been  made  plain,  this  is  due  chiefly  to  her.  The  manu- 
script was  read  by  Professor  George  Herbert  Palmer, 
whose  criticism  and  generous  interest  have  been  alike 
invaluable ;  by  my  colleague,  Mr.  Charles  A.  Bennett, 
who  has  given  substantial  aid  both  in  the  thought  and 
in  the  work  of  indexing ;  also,  in  large  part,  by  Mr. 
Clarence  Day,  Junior,  of  New  York,  for  whose  careful, 
untechnical  comments  I  am  especially  grateful. 

WILLIAM  ERNEST  HOCKING. 

NEW  HAVEN,  April  7, 1912. 


A  second  printing  gives  opportunity  to  make  a  few  verbal  changes. 
The  structure  of  the  text  and  the  paging  are  not  altered. 
NEW  HAVEN,  March  31,  1913. 


Acknowledgment.  —  The  editor  of  Mind  has  kindly  allowed 
me  to  make  use  (in  part  five  and  in  the  last  appendix)  of 
parts  of  an  article  on  "  The  meaning  of  mysticism  "  published 
in  January,  1912.  Two  other  appendices  are  due  to  courtesy 
of  the  editors  of  The  Psychological  Bulletin  and  of  The  Philo- 
sophical Review.  These  are  acknowledged  in  place.  I  wish 
also  here  to  express  thanks  to  the  publishers,  who  in  many 
ways  and  without  stint  have  aided  my  plans  and  contributed 
to  the  result. 


CONTENTS 


PART  I.  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

CHAPTER  I 

How  THE  NATURE  OF  RELIGION  MAY  BE  KNOWN        ^  ..      ,    ,  3 

Two  questions,  what  religion  is  and  what  it  is  worth,  3.  The 
•pragmatic  approach':  judging  what  religion  is  by  what  it 
does,  4.  Can  we  assume  to  know  what  the  effects  of  religion 
are?  5.  How  the  bearing  of  religion  on  another  world  is 
to  be  dealt  with,  6. 

CHAPTER  II 

THE  WORK  OP  RELIGION  IN  HISTORY          .        .        •        .     11 

Religion  rather  fertile  than  useful ;  *  mother  of  the  arts/ 12. 
Emancipation  of  the  arts  from  religion,  13.  And  their  substi- 
tution for  religion,  15.  Whether  any  separate  place  for  reli- 
gion is  left,  20.  The  perpetual  parentage  of  religion,  23. 
Corrective  of  liberty  and  of  culture  :  the  world  of  *  owns,'  24. 
Source  of  creativity  in  instinct  and  in  the  arts,  25. 

CHAPTER  HI 

THE  TRAITS  OF  RELIGION  IN  PERSONS         .        .        .        .27 

Every  man  a  connoisseur  in  judging  religion,  270  Traits  of 
the  religious  soul,  28.  Religion  tentatively  defined  as  *  antici- 
pated attainment,'  31.  Paradox  of  this  definition,  and  pro- 
blem that  emerges,  32. 


PART  II.   RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS 

THEORY 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE  RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT 37 

The  general  tendency  to  put  reason  into  the  background, 
37.    Special  interest  of  religion  in  this  change,  38.    Various 


CONTENTS 

reasons  for  it :  comparison  of  religions,  40 ;  new  views  of  reli- 
gious history,  41.  More  general  reasons :  our  acquired  scientific 
instinct,  42.  The  psychological,  biological,  and  pragmatic  cur- 
rents, 43  ;  the  critical  current,  'Dr.'  Locke's  view  of  ideas,  48. 
Resulting  conception  of  a  religion  of  feeling,  49.  What  satis- 
faction can  such  religion  offer  ?  51.  Altered  view  of  revela- 
tion, 53. 

CHAPTER   V 
RELIGION'S  DILEMMA  IN  RESPECT  TO  THEORY      .        .        .56 

Disadvantages  of  the  religion  of  feeling,  56.  Religion  has 
never  regarded  itself  as  an  affair  of  feeling,  57.  The  genuine 
dilemma,  the  'dialectical  illusion,'  59.  The  dilemma  as  it 
appears  in  history,  scholastic  versus  mystic,  60.  Proposed 
solutions,  by  splitting  the  mind,  by  uniting  the  mind,  62. 

CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DESTINY  OF  FEELING    . 64 

Feeling  as  conscious  instability,  65.  Ending  in  present 
knowledge  of  an  object,  66.  Equivalence  between  feeling  and 
idea  in  doing  work,  69.  Friendship  as  feeling  and  as  creed,  70. 
Religious  feeling  and  its  cognitive  intention,  72.  Need  reli- 
gious ideas  be  true  ?  73  ;  or  literal  ?  75. 

CHAPTER  VII 

How  IDEAS  OF  IDEAS  MISREPRESENT  THEM          .        .         .77 

Re'sume' ;  the  ethics  of  communicating  feeling,  77.  Problem 
of  religious  knowledge  put  as  a  question  of  the  adequacy  of  ideas, 
78.  What  an  idea  is,  79.  The  circle  as  symbol  of  the  idea,  80. 
Can  the  idea  comprehend  change?  M.  Bergson's  position, 
82.  The  difference  between  knowing  and  reasoning,  87. 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  ALLEGED  FINITUDE  OF  IDEAS        .....     90 

The  infinite  as  an  impossible  task  for  knowledge,  90. 
Hoffding's  view  of  religious  knowledge,  91.  The  infinite  as 
an  object  of  all  ideas,  93.  The  knowledge  of  totality,  94. 
How  knowledge  grows,  beginning  with  the  whole,  95.  Why 
knowledge  about  the  whole  is  precarious,  97.  Advantage  of 
the  child,  98.  Religion  and  science,  99. 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER   IX 

THE  RETREAT  INTO  SUBJECTIVITY 100 

Denial  of  predicates  does  not  make  an  idea  negative,  101. 
Nor  reduce  it  to  a  feeling,  102.  The  growth  of  Arts  making 
literal  truth  in  religion  possible,  103.  Necessary  simplic- 
ity of  whole-knowledge,  104.  Mystical  methods  of  religious 
insight,  appeals  to  subconsciousness  and  instinct,  involve  no 
retreat  into  subjectivity,  105. 

CHAPTER  X 

THE   IDEA-WORLD    IN   ITS   AIM    TOWARD   FREEDOM    FROM 

FEELING 109 

Tendency  of  idea  to  lose  vital  connection  with  feeling,  109. 
The  ideal  of  independence,  110.  The  permanent  idea-world, 
111.  The  theoretical  attitude,  112.  Attempt  to  explain 
away  the  theoretical  attitude  as  a  practical  development, 
115.  Failure  of  the  action-theory  in  this  attempt,  117. 
Ideas  lodge  their  meanings  in  a  '  region  of  indifference,'  118 ; 
Nature  or  substance,  119.  Our  interest  in  substance  is  orig- 
inal, 120  ;  not  derived  from  other  interest,  122. 

CHAPTER  XI 

IDEA  IN  ORGANIC  UNION  WITH  FEELING      ....  124 

Interests  and  values  seem  ultimate  facts,  125.  Yet  require 
to  be  explained,  126.  They  depend  in  part  upon  the  *  apper- 
ceptive  mass,'  127  ;  the  idea-resource,  129.  Theory  of  the 
dependence  of  values  upon  the  whole-idea,  130.  Illustrated 
in  the  growth  of  values,  132  ;  in  the  value  of  personality,  134  ; 
in  love,  135  ;  and  altruism,  136.  How  theory,  and  especially 
religious  theory,  determines  the  value-level  of  consciousness, 
and  thereby  all  feeling,  136. 

CHAPTER   XII 

THE  WILL  AS  A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH 139 

The  idea  that  religious  truth  may  belong  to  the  unfinished 
parts  of  reality,  140  ;  and  so  be  a  function  of  the  will,  144. 
The  poetry  of  the  Orient  versus  the  literality  of  the  West  in 
religion,  149.  Loyalty  implies  necessity,  152.  Our  creativ- 
ity is  derivative,  154.  Religious  truth  must  be  founded  on 
experience,  therefore  on  reason  also,  154. 

NOTE  ON  PRAGMATIC  IDEALISM  .  157 


xxviii  CONTENTS 

PART  III.    THE  NEED  OF  GOD 
PRELIMINARY  NOTE 165 

CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  NEED  OF  UNITY:  MONISM  AS  BEARING  ON  OPTIMISM  .  166 

No  optimism  without  some  unity,  167  ;  beneath  the  surface 
of  experience,  168.  Unities  too  feeble  for  optimism,  169. 
Unities  of  world  powers  and  problems,  172.  The  view  that 
evil  is  less  real  than  good,  174.  The  scientific  reaction  to 
evil ;  justice  versus  a  moral  monism,  175.  Monism  and  re- 
sponsibility, 177.  Residual  pluralism  in  the  materials  of  his- 
tory, 179. 

CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  NEED  OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  :  REFLECTIONS  ON  ITS  PRACTI- 
CAL WORTH 183 

Indictment  of  the  Absolute,  184.  Not  an  object  of  worship, 
185.  Use  of  the  changeless,  187.  The  two  premisses  of  action, 
190.  Does  the  Absolute  answer  the  questions  that  lead  to  it  ? 
—  the  epistemologist's  question,  191 ;  the  moralist's  question, 
193  ;  the  metaphysician's  question,  194  ;  the  question  of  reli- 
gion, 195.  How  form  may  matter,  197 ;  the  irrelevant  uni- 
versal may  do  work,  199.  Consciousness  as  something  which 
makes  differences,  201.  Its  absolute  object  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  this  work,  203. 

CHAPTER  XV 

THE  NEED  OF  A  GOD 207 

McTaggart's  critical  estimate  of  the  probable  worth  of 
what  God  does,  208 ;  of  what  God  is,  214.  The  futility  of 
probabilities  here,  214.  The  worth  of  God  must  also  be  found 
in  experience,  215.  Our  happiness  depends  on  openness  to 
experience,  217 ;  and  this,  in  turn,  on  the  possibility  of  trans- 
muting evil,  218.  Experiences  of  this  transmutation,  220. 
The  logic  of  a  supreme  power,  221 ;  applied  to  the  idea  of  a 
supreme  power  over  evil,  222.  How  religious  experience 
seems  to  meet  these  conditions,  224.  But  a  finite  God  is  of  no 
worth,  225. 


CONTENTS  xxix 

PART  IV.    HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  ORIGINAL  SOURCES  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD         .  229 

Experience  and  tradition,  229.  Nature  and  social  experi- 
ence as  mediators  of  God,  230.  Not  ultimate  sources,  233. 
The  knowledge  of  ignorance,  235 ;  of  mystery,  236  ;  of  the 
presence  of  another  knower,  237.  Religion  the  source  of  alien- 
ation from  the  world,  as  well  as  its  remedy,  238. 

CHAPTER   XVII 

THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  MINDS  THAN  OUR  Owif  -        •  241 

Three  classes  of  objects,  and  the  organs  for  knowing 
them,  241.  Elusiveness  of  social  knowledge,  243.  Various 
ways  of  accounting  for  our  knowledge  of  other  minds :  by 
criteria,  246 ;  by  response,  248  ;  by  acknowledgment,  250. 
Assumptions  common  to  all  these  ways,  250.  The  trilemma 
of  knowledge,  251. 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

SUCH  KNOWLEDGE  AS  WE  COULD  DESIRE      ....  255 

We  have  no  desire  to  know  other  mind  except  as  engaged 
in  nature,  255.  The  ideal  of  communicating  without  physi- 
cal media,  telepathy,  256.  Why  this  ideal  is  plausible,  257. 
Knowledge  of  other  mind  in  its  objects,  260 ;  in  its  body,  262. 
How  would  the  immediate  presence  of  another  mind  differ 
from  experience  as  it  is  ?  265. 

CHAPTER  XIX 

THAT  KNOWLEDGE  WE  HAVE        ......  268 

Theory  that  experience  of  nature  and  social  experience  are 
inseparable,  269.  Implying  that  social  experience  is  continu- 
ous, 270.  And  without  independent  beginning,  271.  The 
actuality  of  social  experience,  274.  Might  it  be  a  mere 
ideal?  275.  Three  difficulties  in  recognizing  the  experience, 
279.  The  difficulty  of  social  verification,  279. 


XTJC  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XX 

OUR  NATURAL  REALISM  AND  REALISM  ABSOLUTE        .        .  282 

Natural  realism  excludes  social  experience,  282.  Nature 
is  objective,  but  objectivity  requires  and  admits  explanation, 
284.  Our  dependence  upon  nature  interpreted  in  terms  of 
creation,  not  causation,  286 ;  and  creation  in  terms  of  com- 
munication, 288.  Realism  and  idealism,  290. 

CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  GOD  OF  NATURE  AND  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  MAN         .  291 

Problem  of  identifying  the  fundamental  social  object,  291. 
Is  it  a  collective  object  ?  292.  It  must  be  a  single  self,  self- 
conscious  and  wholly  active,  293-5.  Proximate  shapes  taken 
by  this  experience  in  consciousness,  295.  The  experience  of 
God  making  human  social  experience  possible,  297.  The  re- 
gion of  community  of  consciousness,  298 ;  solitary  selfhood 
an  acquisition,  299. 

CHAPTER  XXII 

THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  FOR  THE  EXISTENCE  OF  GOD  301 

Re'sume'  of  results ;  the  literalness  of  religious  experience, 
301.  What  is  a  proof,  in  case  of  an  object  of  experience  ? 
303.  Ways  of  proving  God ;  their  starting-point,  the  reality 
of  nature,  305.  Valid  proof  must  interpret  the  history  of 
experience,  307.  The  dialectic  of  experience  which  leads  to 
the  God-idea,  308.  The  reality  of  this  idea,  310.  Valid  and 
invalid  forms  of  the  ontological  argument,  313. 

CHAPTER   XXIII 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD         .         .        .  317 

Merits  and  defects  of  animism,  317.  Advance  from  spirits 
to  gods,  318.  Qualities  of  a  god,  319.  How  the  knowledge 
of  God  grows,  321.  God  as  one  and  as  many,  324.  Prema- 
ture monotheisms,  325.  God  as  near  and  as  remote,  326. 
God  as  moral  and  as  amoral,  330.  God  as  personal  and  as 
impersonal,  332. 


CONTENTS  mi 

PART  V.   WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

CHAPTER   XXIV 

THOUGHT  AND  WORSHIP 341 

Worship  as  the  sphere  of  the  will,  341 ;  how  different  from 

philosophic  contemplation,  342.    As  seen  in   history,  344. 

What  is  the  essential  part  of  rite  ?  347.    Mystics  true  and  false, 

349. 
NOTE  ox  THE  MEANING  OF  MYSTICISM        .        .        .        .  350 

CHAPTER   XXV 

PRELIMINARY  DOUBTS  OF  THE  WORTH  OF  WORSHIP    .        .  356 

Prejudices  against  the  worth  of  special  acts  of  worship,  356. 
Presumptions  in  favor  of  the  worth  of  prayer,  358.  The  na- 
ture of  spiritual  ambition,  359.  A  quest  of  self  knowledge, 
360 ;  of  knowledge  of  reality,  362  ;  of  the  new  and  untried, 
363.  Worship  as  an  essay  in  detachment,  365.  The  love  of 
God  explained  by  what  it  is  not,  366. 

CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  MYSTIC'S  PREPARATION:  THE  NEGATIVE  PATH     .        .  369 

Prayer  as  exercise  of  a  special  faculty,  370.  Physical  pre- 
paration, 372.  'Purgation,'  373;  the  casuistry  of  self-sup- 
pression, 374.  *  Meditation,'  376 ;  its  passing  objects,  379. 
Passivity,  382 ;  its  paradoxical  character,  383.  Summary 
view  of  preparation,  387 

CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MYSTICISM  ......  389 

Does  mystic  experience  come  within  the  scope  of  psychology, 
390.  The  significance  of  its  transiency,  391.  Characteris- 
tics of  mystic  psychology :  (1)  Rhythm,  392.  Not  identical 
with  oscillation  of  vital  tone, 393 ;  nor  an  abnormal  alternation, 
395.  Organic  analogies,  396.  (2)  Disconnection,  397.  A 
practical  principle  which  suspends  rationality,  399 ;  and  pre- 
cedes conventionality,  401.  (3)  Solitude,  402.  Its  danger  and 
its  importance,  403.  Mysticism  the  redemption  of  solitude,  404. 


xxxii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   XXVIII 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MYSTICISM  :  THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTER- 
NATION       405 

The  principle  of  alternation  versus  the  pursuit  of  concreted 
good,  406.  Alternation  between  whole  and  part  in  the  tem- 
poral work  of  thought  and  will,  407.  The  necessity  for  al- 
ternation found  in  the  nature  of  voluntary  attention,  412. 
Symptoms  of  spiritual  fatigue,  415.  Reversal  from  work  to 
pleasure  and  worship,  418.  Relation  of  worship  to  pleasure, 
etc.,  419.  The  mystic's  motive,  422.  The  failure  of  perma- 
nent worship,  425.  Major  rhythm  of  life,  427. 

CHAPTER   XXIX 

PRAYER  AND  ITS  ANSWER 428 

Mystic  experience  as  answer  to  prayer,  428.  The  com- 
moner forms  of  mystic  experience,  428.  The  realization  of 
the  uniqueness  of  time,  429.  The  discovery  of  oneself  as 
individual,  430.  The  discovery  of  another  self  as  individ- 
ual, 431.  Nature  of  love,  433.  Perception  of  the  whole  as 
individual,  the  love  of  God,  433.  The  permanent  meaning 
of  prayer,  436.  The  religious  right,  437.  The  sanctions  of 
worship,  439. 


CONTENTS 

PART  VI.    THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 
PRELIMINARY  NOTE 445 

CHAPTER  XXX 

PECULIAR  KNOWLEDGE  AND  CERTAINTY:  REVELATION  AND 
DOGMA 447 

The  mystic  is  first  an  original  knower  of  old  truth,  448. 
Why  he  regards  this  truth  as  of  general  interest,  449.  The 
'that'  as  prior  to  the  'what,'  453.  Infallibility  versus  its 
content,  455.  The  incidental  fruitf ulness  of  his  revelation, 
457.  Origin  of  special  dogmas,  458.  The  errors  of  dogma, 
459. 

CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  CREATIVITY  OF  RELIGION:  THEORY  OF  INSPIRATION    .  462 

Creativity  has  its  logic,  462.  The  resistance  to  innovation, 
the  group-form  of  conscious  systems,  463.  Examples  of  the 
creative  event,  466.  Creation  dependent  upon  reflexion,  470. 
How  is  reflexion  possible  ?  472.  Partial  reflexion  depend- 
ent upon  total  reflexion,  which  is  contained  in  worship,  474. 
Induction  akin  to  reflexion,  475.  Observation,  genius,  476. 
Novelty  and  continuity  of  consciousness,  478.  Limitation 
overcoming  itself,  481. 

CHAPTER  XXXII 

THE  PROPHETIC  CONSCIOUSNESS 485 

The  problem  of  particular  fortune,  485.  Happiness  de- 
taching itself  from  particular  things,  486.  Doctrine  of  the 
inner  control  of  happiness,  488.  Psychological  nature  of  un- 
happiness,  491.  Conditions  of  happiness,  492.  Paradoxical 
attitudes  towards  pain  and  defeat,  493.  Stoicism  ancient 
and  modern,  495.  Altruism,  497.  Altruism  not  sufficient, 
500.  Need  of  prophetic  consciousness,  503.  Anticipations 
of  prophecy  in  common  experience,  505.  The  cost  of  pro- 
phetic power,  509.  Prophecy  and  mystic  experience,  512. 
Religion  and  the  historic  virtues,  512. 


raiv  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   XXXIII 

THE  UNIFYING  OF  HISTORY 515 

The  external  conditions  for  religious  confidence,  516.  The 
prophetic  will  tends  to  create  the  conditions  for  its  own  suc- 
cess, 517.  Bringing  into  history  a  structure  like  that  of  nature, 
518.  The  meaning  of  the  religious  institution,  519.  The 
problem  of  positive  religion,  520.  Positive  religion  and  the 
State,  520.  The  need  for  positive  religion ;  the  actual  founda- 
tions of  faith,  523. 

EXPLANATORY  NOTES  AND  ESSAYS 

1.  NOTE  ON  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS    .        .        .        .  .  527 

2.  THE    RELATIONS    BETWEEN   IDEA   AND   VALUE    UNDER- 

STOOD THROUGH  BIOLOGY     ......  539 

3.  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  INDEPENDENT  REALITY  .        .        .  558 

4.  NOTE  ON  LEUBA'S   THEORY   OF    THE   NATURE  OF    THE 

MYSTIC'S  LOVE  OF  GOD       ......  574 

INDEX  .  579 


PART  I 

RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 


CHAPTER  I 

HOW  THE  NATURE  OF  RELIGION   MAY  BE 
KNOWN 

WE  are  proposing  to  reach  some  definite  conclusion 
about  the  nature  and  worth  of  religion  —  what 
it  consists  of  in  the  way  of  experience,  belief,  and  action; 
what  comes  of  it  in  the  way  of  support,  outlook,  and  actual 
productiveness.  As  to  the  nature  of  religion,  we  are  pro- 
posing especially  to  enquire  how  much  it  is  concerned 
with  theoretical  propositions  to  be  believed,  metaphysical 
assertions,  doctrines  about  unseen  things  and  things  past 
and  to  come  —  in  short,  how  far  the  intellect  is  involved  ; 
how  far,  on  the  other  hand,  religion  appeals  to  some- 
thing in  us  deeper  than  intellect,  —  to  faith,  to  feeling, 
to  the  subconscious,  to  the  instinctive,  to  the  essential 
will.  Certainly,  in  our  own  time,  the  worth  of  intellect 
in  religion  is  much  discredited ;  various  ways  are  sug* 
gested  as  to  how  we  may  take  our  creeds  without  taking 
them  literally  —  as  figurative  or  symbolic  expressions  of 
truths  that  cannot  be  exactly  formulated,  as  postulates 
whose  significance  is  primarily  moral,  as  declarations  of 
value,  as  determinations  of  the  will.  And  yet  one  seems 
to  require  literality  at  some  point  in  his  creed ;  we  wish 
to  bring  our  religion  at  least  into  the  same  universe 
with  our  science  (whose  propositions  are  all  '  literal ') 
and  to  have  them  speak  with  the  same  voice  when  they 
verge,  as  at  their  limits  they  do  verge,  upon  the  same 


4  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

great  questions  of  human  destiny.  Further,  we  do  not 
believe  that  either  science  or  religion  is  irrelevant  to  con- 
duct, and  when  they  bear  upon  the  same  fundamental 
issues  of  practice  we  wish  to  see  a  fair  understanding 
between  them.  We  are  open  to  the  opinion  that  reli- 
gion does  in  some  way  take  us  beyond  reason,  and  that 
religious  truth  must  in  some  measure  be  clothed  in  sym- 
bols ;  but  we  are  not  open  to  believe  that  reason  and 
our  beyond-reason  are  separate  and  independent  func- 
tions. As  surely  as  any  one  person  rides  one  consecu- 
tive route  of  experience  through  time,  so  surely  must 
all  the  truth  that  belongs  to  one  person  come  to  the 
same  court  and  enter  into  the  same  total  system  of  his 
world.  We  are  proposing,  therefore,  to  interest  our- 
selves especially  in  the  parts  that  reason  and  beyond- 
reason  play  in  the  so-called  truths  of  religion. 

And  we  think  that  we  shall  be  helped  in  determining 
what  religion  is  by  first  fixing  our  attention  upon  what 
religion  does,  as  if  religion  could  best  be  seen  not  by 
direct  inspection,  but  in  its  effects.  Not  only  is  it  true 
that  religion  is  itself  an  invisible  and  intangible  object, 
best  discovered  as  wind  —  and  the  spirit  generally  — are 
discovered,  in  what  they  move ;  but  also,  our  interest  in 
religion  is  due  to  an  opinion  of  its  value,  or  at  any  rate 
of  its  actual  influence  in  the  world,  so  that  our  identifi- 
cation of  it  and  understanding  of  it  are  guided  by  these 
supposed  consequences.  This,  we  may  say,  is  a  pragmatic 
approach  to  our  subject;  and  it  will  have  the  advantage 
of  leaving  open  the  question  what  importance  theoret- 
ical propositions  may  have  in  religion ;  —  it  is  possible, 
for  instance,  that  the  feelings  may  prove  to  be  the  work- 
ing part  of  religion  and  the  ideas  a  matter  of  derivative 


THE    NATURE  OF  RELIGION  5 

importance.     But  there  are  serious  objections  to  this 
way  of  learning  the  nature  of  religion. 

The  first  is  that  we  shall  be  moving  in  a  circle.  The 
value  of  religion  is  half  of  our  problem,  perhaps  the 
larger  half ;  can  we  assume  that  we  already  know  the 
value  and  works  of  religion  as  a  guide  to  the  knowledge 
of  its  nature,  and  then  treat  its  nature  as  a  source  of  the 
knowledge  of  its  works  ?  I  only  answer  this  objection 
by  accepting  it.  In  any  living  subject  we  have  to  assume 
that  we  already  know  something  as  a  capital  whereby 
to  win  a  wider  and  more  exact  knowledge.  And  it  is  the 
usual  procedure  of  science  to  use  the  phenomena  as  a 
means  of  winning  a  formula  for  the '  things',  and  the  for- 
mula in  turn  as  a  means  of  discovering  further  phenom- 
ena. This  circle,  or  as  I  prefer  to  put  it,  this  alterna- 
tion between  inner  and  outer,  is  our  own  way  of  life, 
and  the  way  of  all  knowledge. 

The  second  objection  is  more  specific.  It  is  that  the 
chief  works  of  religion  are  as  invisible  and  conjectural 
as  religion  itself,  since  they  belong  to  another  world 
than  this.  No  historic  religion  has  pretended  to  recom- 
mend itself  to  men  solely  on  the  ground  of  its  value  for 
the  present  life  and  social  order.  Most  developed  reli- 
gions, on  the  contrary,  insist  on  the  comparative  worth- 
lessness  of  these  goods,  make  it  a  point  to  draw  away 
our  attention  and  affections  from  them,  and  assert  that 
the  treasures  to  which  they  would  introduce  us  are  else- 
where. If  such  religions  render  distinct  service  to  human 
society,  it  is  an  incidental  service.  The  most  widely  in- 
fluential of  religions,  Buddhism,  must  by  its  own  logic 
regard  itself  a  failure  in  so  far  as  it  tends  in  any  way 
to  make  this  present  existence,  whether  personal,  social, 


6  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN   ITS  EFFECTS 

or  political,  more  attractive.  And  B uddhism  is  not  alone 
in  this  deprecation  of  things  present.1  Any  attempt, 
therefore,  to  judge  religion  pragmatically,  that  is,  by  its 
effects  in  human  experience,  would  seem  to  promise  little 
to  the  point :  at  best,  its  estimate  is  threatened  by 
defective  proportion. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  true  that  religion  has,  for  the  most 
part,  regarded  itself  as  ministering  to  the  welfare  of  two 
worlds,  and  not  of  one  only.  It  seems  to  have  gained  a 
foothold  on  this  planet  originally  by  combining  its  in- 
visible interests  (so  immensely  real  to  the  imaginative 
animal)  with  other  interests  of  a  practical  and  immedi- 
ate nature.  The  gods  were  Powers,  perceptible  in  field, 
water-course,  and  fruit ;  in  cloud,  in  battle,  and  in  bodily 
health  or  disease  —  though  their  great  historical  exploits 
may  have  belonged  to  regions  behind  the  sun.  Penal- 
ties visited  upon  the  profane  were  physical  as  well  as 
metaphysical ;  to  be  "  cut  off  from  fire  and  water " 
meant  pain,  probably  death,  to  the  body  as  well  as  to 
the  social  nature  and  the  soul.  And  with  the  growing 
belief  that  the  other  world,  whatever  it  be,  is  not  a 
jealous  rival  of  this  present,  but  at  least  in  relations  of 

1  Neither  Schopenhauer's  nor  Rousseau's  interpretation  of  Chris- 
tianity will  be  acceptable  to  everybody.  But  these  words  from  The  Social 
Contract  are  not  all  false;  and  may  remind  us  how  recently  it  has  be- 
come absurd  to  take  their  view  as  full  truth.  "  Christianity  is  an  entirely 
spiritual  religion,  concerned  solely  with  heavenly  things  ;  the  Christian's 
country  is  not  of  this  world.  He  does  his  duty,  it  is  true  ;  but  he  does  it 
with  a  profound  indifference  as  to  the  good  or  ill  success  of  his  endeavors. 
Provided  that  he  has  nothing  to  reproach  himself  with,  it  matters  little 
to  him  whether  all  goes  well  or  ill  here  below.  If  the  State  flourishes,  he 
scarcely  dares  to  enjoy  the  public  felicity.  If  the  State  declines,  he 
blesses  the  hand  of  God  which  lies  heavy  on  his  people."  —  Book  iv, 
ch.  viii. 


THE  NATURE  OF  RELIGION  7 

friendliness  and  perhaps  of  organic  union  with  it,  the 
impression  deepens  in  our  common  consciousness  that 
the  fruits  by  which  true  religion  is  to  be  known  are 
such  as  ripen  in  part  before  our  eyes.  By  virtue  of 
some  harmony  of  nature  in  the  two  worlds,  nothing 
which  is  profitable  in  the  one  can,  we  believe,  be  wholly 
noxious  in  the  other.  And  by  virtue  of  some  actual 
intercourse  between  heaven  and  earth,  the  effects  of 
salvation  may  echo  back  and  be  noted  in  moral  advance- 
ment, economic  welfare,  and  the  success  of  armies.  Our 
increasing  confidence  that  what  we  bind  on  earth  is 
likewise  bound  in  heaven,  and  that  what  we  regard  as 
good  here  is  esteemed  there  in  the  same  sense,  makes 
it  necessary  for  religion  to  submit  to  a  type  of  measure- 
ment that  must  once  have  seemed  unspeakably  worldly 
and  irrelevant.  In  proportion  as  any  form  of  religion 
hinders,  or  fails  to  promote,  what  we  regard  as  '  welfare' 
—  that  form  is  judged  false :  in  no  religion  is  authority 
now  so  far  prior  to  social  judgment  that  it  could  again 
impose  upon  Europe  the  human  sacrifice  or  the  sacred 
prostitution.  When  we  now  say  that  God  loves  men, 
we  mean  in  part  that  God  loves  what  we  love;  and 
when  we  refer  to  the  will  of  God,  we  think  we  know 
that  will  chiefly  through  our  knowledge  of  the  condi- 
tions of  social  soundness  and  progress.  We  have  all  but 
lost  our  power  to  believe  in  the  great  reversal  with  which 
religious  enthusiasm  would  once  unhesitatingly  confront 
any  confessed  ambition. 

To  be  more  definite,  a  certain  large  part  of  that 
primitive  Other- world  has  been  reclaimed  as  an  integral 
part  of  this  sphere  of  things.  I  do  not  mean  simply 
that  human  ambitions  have  become  capable  of  more 


8  RELIGION   AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

idealism  ;  so  that  the  old  contrast  between  the  present 
and  the  beyond  is  largely  reproduced  in  the  contrast 
between  the  narrower  and  the  wider  interest,  the  self- 
sesking  desires  and  the  love  of  mankind.  I  mean  that 
we  have  learned  something  of  the  sources  of  the  older 
ideas  about  the  Other-world  ;  and  that  we  can  identify 
at  least  some  of  that  Other-world  with  the  human  mind 
itself.  For  the  human  mind  stands  in  direct  contrast 
with  nature ;  is  somehow  superior  to  nature,  including 
it  as  in  some  god-realm  remote  yet  intimate,  a  world 
of  another  sort.  To  the  ancient  beginner  in  self-know- 
ledge, unfurnished  with  psychological  ideas  and  unac- 
quainted with  the  mysteries  of  introspection,  his  own 
mind  appears  to  him  —  can  only  appear  to  him  —  as 
a  part  of  supernature.  He  has  no  way  to  express  what 
goes  on  within  him  save  in  objective  terms,  imaginatively 
chosen  and  projected.  The  gods  who  in  ordeal  choked 
the  liar,  showed  themselves  to  the  youth  at  initiation, 
who  inspired  the  dance,  swung-up  the  rage  of  fighting 
to  omnipotence  point,  answered  many  a  prayer,  were  in 
some  part  functions  of  his  own  soul  —  or  of  his  sub- 
soul.  Commands  of  the  deity  revealed  to  shaman  and 
priest,  —  we  may  fairly  call  them  instinctive  forebod- 
ings of  social  good  and  evil,  and  say  that  supernature 
here  is  but  remoter  nature,  impressing  itself  upon  the 
sense  of  the  keener-strung  members  of  the  race.  It  is 
simply  the  higher  mental  process  that  is  read  as  a  voice 
from  another  world. 

So  also  with  every  new  idea,  with  every  product  of 
"  inspiration  "  :  those  to  whom  at  first,  and  rarely,  such 
inbursts  of  reflexive  insight  came  with  definiteness  and 
power  could  not  have  done  otherwise  than  refer  them 


THE  NATURE  OF  RELIGION  9 

to  a  supernatural  source.  Moments  of  deeper  thought 
and  in  tenser  fancy  distinguished  above  the  common- 
place of  existence,  moments  of  imagination  and  inven- 
tion, —  these  moments  have  in  all  ages  struck  upon  the 
mind  as  from  a  world  beyond  that  of  the  visible  career. 
No  one  upon  whom  reflection,  the  awareness  of  his  own 
solitary  self,  has  broken  as  an  epoch  in  experience  with 
the  effect  at  once  of  revelation  and  command,  can  fail 
to  understand  how  those  early  spokesmen  of  the  spirit 
believed  themselves  both  passive  and  at  the  same  time 
more  than  human  in  the  hours  of  their  elevation ;  and 
how  in  declaring  themselves  media  for  the  utterance  of 
sacred  oracles  they  were  but  recognizing  that  impera- 
tive impulse  which  an  intense  conviction  always  imposes 
upon  the  soul.  The  primitive  prophet  must  have  re- 
garded the  mystery  of  his  insight  with  as  much  wonder 
and  reverence  as  its  expression  would  excite  in  those 
around  him.  Yet  here  also  we  are  now  able  to  recog- 
nize in  large  measure  the  natural  operations  of  our  own 
minds,  conscious  and  subconscious. 

In  such  ways  as  this  much  of  the  language  of  classic 
religion  can  be  interpreted,  and  so  much  of  the  su- 
pernatural thereby  naturalized,  that  we  may  question 
whether  any  significant  part  of  the  Other-world  is  left 
to  be  considered  in  a  theory  of  religion. 

For  my  part,  I  do  not  accept  the  notion  that  the 
Other-world  can  be  wholly  transferred  to  the  present 
by  these  interpretations.  There  remains  to  me  some- 
thing literal  in  the  supernature  of  the  most  material 
and  credulous  savage.  I  stand  with  him  in  the  belief 
that  religion  would  vanish  if  the  whole  tale  of  its  value 
were  shifted  to  the  sphere  of  human  affairs,  however 


10  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

psychically  or  spiritually  understood.  But  I  accept  the 
interpretations,  as  far  as  they  can  go.  They  prove 
enough  to  justify  our  method.  They  show  an  inter- 
mixture, anastomosis,  and  analogy  between  the  Other- 
world  and  this,  so  thorough  that  if  we  begin  our  study 
of  religion  by  a  rough  survey  of  its  working  in  our  social 
structure  and  history  we  shall  not  go  wide  of  the  mark. 
Whatever  other  knowledge  we  might  gain  of  religion, 
there  could  be  no  complete  understanding  unless  it  were 
also  known  in  its  bearing  upon  those  interests  we  call 
humanistic. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  WORK  OF  RELIGION   IN  HISTORY 

IF  we  undertake  to  judge  what  religion  is  by  what 
religion  has  done  in  history,  some  data  are  conspicu- 
ous, others  obscure,  —  little  is  of  sure  purport.  Students 
of  Kulturgeschichte  are  more  ready  than  they  were  to 
credit  religion  with  certain  definite  achievements  and 
services,  especially  at  the  beginning,  in  the  rude  busi- 
ness of  nation-making,  law-making,  mind-making.1  But 
as  religion  ceases  to  be  the  one  salient  social  force  its  re- 
sults mingle  with  the  effects  of  other  factors ;  clear  trac- 
ing of  the  causal  nerve  is  difficult.  From  the  record,  vast 
and  igneous  as  it  is,  there  appears  also  a  certain  con- 
tradictoriness  in  the  effects  of  religion.  It  is  credited 
with  works  of  government,  charged  with  works  of  war, 
—  it  sheds  blood  as  generously  as  it  promotes  brother- 
hood. Religion  has  fostered  everything  valuable  to  man 
and  has  obstructed  everything:  it  has  welded  states 
and  disintegrated  them  ;  it  has  rescued  races  and  it  has 
oppressed  them,  destroyed  them,  condemned  them  to 
perpetual  wandering  and  outlawry.  It  has  raised  the 
value  of  human  life,  and  it  has  depressed  the  esteem  of 
that  life  almost  to  the  point  of  vanishing ;  it  has  hon- 
ored womanhood,  it  has  slandered  marriage.  Here  is 
an  energy  of  huge  potency  but  of  ambiguous  character. 
From  such  a  survey  but  one  uncontradicted  impression 

1  See  Lippert,  Bagehot,  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  Kidd,  Hobhouse,  etc. 


12  RELIGION  AS   SEEN  IN  ITS   EFFECTS 

emerges :  the  thing  has  been  radical ;  it  has  had  some 
grip  upon  the  original  instincts  of  human  nature  ;  it  has 
known  how  to  rule  and  to  swirl  into  its  own  vortex  all  the 
currents  of  love,  of  hunger,  and  of  self-defense ;  and  it 
has  been  able  to  put  these  severally  and  together  under 
its  feet.  It  is  this  dynamic  aspect  of  religion,  an  in- 
finite resource,  which  has  appealed  to  capable  political 
intelligence  since  the  days  of  Roman,  perhaps  of  Per- 
sian, imperial  policy ;  and  it  is  this  same  aspect  which 
appeals  now  to  the  scientist  of  society,  whose  eye  is 
quick  for  usable  elements  of  public  power. 

But  religion,  though  a  social  force  of  unknown  mag- 
nitude, has  never  been  tamed  to  harness  by  statesman, 
diplomat,  or  sociologue :  the  word  (  useful '  hardly  ap- 
plies to  it.  Unlike  the  forces  of  nature,  it  is  not  now 
better  known  and  more  manageable  for  having  been 
long  dealt  with.  Statecraft  has  learned  to  fear  it  rather 
than  to  tamper  with  it ;  and  having  once  hotly  sought 
alliance  now  everywhere  seeks  separation.  A  thing  so 
root-mighty  cannot  fail  to  excite  the  lust  for  power ; 
but  the  exploiter  has  been  at  every  point  of  contact 
stunned  back  by  a  touch  of  the  uncontrollable.  It  is  as 
if  man's  reason  were  trying  to  make  bargains  with  man's 
insanity.  As  a  social  force,  the  laws  of  religious  caus- 
ality have  not  been  discovered. 

And  in  fact,  from  the  side  of  its  deeds  in  history 
religion  remains  a  mystery.  Its  career  is  the  swath  of 
an  agency  immense,  invisible,  paradoxical.  If  its  works 
are  patent,  they  no  more  reveal  its  character  than  they 
becloud  it.  But  the  surface  of  historic  fact  which  yields 
BO  little  to  an  external  inspection  and  use  may  respond 
more  quickly  to  a  simple  hypothesis.  What  I  have  to 


THE  WORK  OF  RELIGION  IN  HISTORY  13 

propose  is  indeed  something  less  than  a  theory  at  first, 
a  rather  unpromising  tool,  a  figure  of  speech  both  com- 
monplace and  faulty.  It  is  this.  The  effect  of  religion 
in  history  appears  most  comprehensible  to  me  when  I 
regard  it  not  primarily  as  an  actor  but  as  a  parent, 
a  parent  whose  deeds  are  far  less  important  than  her 
progeny,  and  whose  most  notable  activity  is  put  forth 
only  in  course  of  her  dealings  with  them.  The  distinc- 
tion between  utility  and  fertility  runs  throughout  na- 
ture. It  is  a  distinction  which  amounts  to  an  incompat- 
ibility at  some  points  in  vital  economy :  it  seems  necessary 
that  at  these  points  life  must  choose  between  the  useful 
and  the  fertile,  so  that  the  secret  of  the  survival  of  many 
an  apparently  idle  organ  or  social  member  is  caught 
only  in  the  rare  moments  of  its  creative  action.  It  is 
vaguely,  the  distinction  between  worker  and  queen, 
leaf  and  blossom,  male  and  female,  science  and  fine  art. 
Utility  belongs  to  the  middle  things  in  creation,  fertility 
to  the  extremes  —  the  ugly,  the  rejected,  the  consum- 
mate, the  perfect —  to  those  things  whereunto  creation 
runs  as  to  hopeless  failure  or  to  final  achievement;  and 
both  the  apparent  failure  and  the  apparent  finality  are 
denied  in  the  moment  when  they  become  fertile.  If 
the  function  of  religion  in  the  world  should  prove  to 
be  of  the  fertile  rather  than  of  the  useful  sort,  the 
curiously  paradoxical  character  of  its  overt  deeds  is  in 
some  measure  accounted  for. 

Allow  me  to  assert  without  detailed  evidence  that  all 
the  arts  of  common  life  owe  their  present  status  and 
vitality  to  some  sojourn  within  the  historic  body  of  reli- 
gion ;  that  there  is  little  in  what  we  call  culture  which  has 
not  at  some  time  been  a  purely  religious  function,  such  as 


14  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

dancing,  legislation,  ceremony,  science,  music,  philos- 
ophy, moral  control.  I  shall  not  enquire  whether  some  of 
these  human  interests  —  which  for  the  sake  of  simplicity 
I  shall  hereafter  refer  to  in  sum  as  "the  Arts"  —  have 
not  had  independent  beginnings,  as  for  example  ethical 
and  legislative  ideas  may  have  had;  for  whenever  this 
has  been  the  case,  the  art  in  question  has  later  found 
its  way  to  amalgamation  with  religion,  and  has  from 
this  absorption  emerged  with  a  new  character  and  an- 
imus. Religion,  I  shall  say,  according  to  this  vague  fig- 
ure, is  the  mother  of  the  Arts :  this  is  its  pragmatic 
place  in  the  history  of  mankind  and  of  culture. 

If  this  figure  is  substantially  right,  the  inference  from 
the  fruits  of  religion  to  the  nature  of  religion  itself  will 
be  more  substantial  and  intimate  than  the  inference 
from  various  effects  to  their  cause,  or  from  scattered 
deeds  to  the  agent  of  them.  For  something  of  religion 
itself  would  have  been  communicated  to  its  offspring, 
and  might  in  all  likelihood  be  recognized  there.  In  at- 
taining their  majority,  the  children  have  not  forgone 
the  quality  of  the  parent :  they  are  still  of  her  stock  and 
substance. 

It  is  true  that  in  their  successive  struggles  for  eman- 
cipation, as  in  all  adolescence,  they  were  less  conscious 
of  their  likeness  to  their  parent  than  of  their  differ- 
ence, and  of  the  smothering  necessity  for  independent 
fare  and  fortune.  They  have  filled  the  air  of  Greek 
and  modern  times  with  cries  to  which  we  have  become 
accustomed  :  "Art  for  art's  sake,"  "  Science  for  science's 
sake,"  "  Right  for  right's  sake,"  "  Humanity  for  hu- 
manity's sake,"  and  the  rest  —  all  of  them  heartily  po- 


THE  WORK  OF  RELIGION  IN  HISTORY  15 

lemic  against  the  notion  that  they  exist  for  any  god's 
sake.  But  note  the  stages  of  their  growth  to  maturity. 
Originally,  an  Art,  no  matter  which  one  —  architecture, 
mensuration,  law-giving,  music  —  is  regarded  as  a  di- 
rect manifestation  of  the  divine,  subject  to  divine  pur- 
poses only ;  then  it  is  shown  to  be  amenable  to  human 
control,  and  makes  good  its  claim,  as  we  have  said,  to 
serve  as  an  independent  human  interest ;  later  on,  the 
question  of  its  divinity  or  humanity  loses  venom,  and  it 
is  acknowledged  a  free  art,  having  a  province  in  either 
sacred  or  secular  subjects ;  finally,  when  all  the  causes 
for  warfare  have  been  won,  the  old  spirit  of  kinship  re- 
sumes sway,  and  someone  sets  up  the  cry  that  the  art  in 
question  is  really  the  essence  of  religion!  No  recent 
century  has  lacked  men  of  weight  who  are  prepared  to 
discard  the  old  progenetrix,  and  to  assert  with  vigor 
that  their  religion,  and  quite  possibly  all  religion,  is 
now  and  hereafter  identified  with  the  cult  of  beauty,  or 
of  truth,  or  of  righteousness,  or  of  human  good,  or  of 
all  together. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  these  several 
ingredients  of  our  spiritual  life  constitute  now  for  the 
world  the  bulk  of  what  religion  it  lives  by.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  history,  religion  is  the  whole  of  culture  ;  at 
its  end,  it  may  seem,  culture  is  the  whole  of  religion. 
This  relationship  must  be  looked  at  somewhat  closely. 


16  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

Progressive  historical  subtraction,  such  as  religion 
has  been  subject  to  in  the  maturing  of  the  arts,  looks 
like  progressive  analysis;  and  as  this  analysis  continues 
the  presumption  grows  that  it  approaches  completion. 
Knowing  as  we  do  that  all  life  moves  toward  the  ex- 
plicit from  the  hidden,  it  is  more  than  a  plausible  hy- 
pothesis that  religion  has  been  simply  the  crude  integral 
and  germ  of  all  these  clearer  essences ;  that  her  life 
has  been  prophetic  and  preparatory,  her  fertility  is 
exhausted,  her  separate  role  is  now  outplayed.  This  im- 
pression is  enforced  by  the  observation  that  each  of 
these  arts  fulfills  in  a  substantial  way  the  traditional 
functions  of  the  older  cult.  Each  one  —  poetry,  or 
thought,  or  social  service  —  has  its  type  of  inspira- 
tion upon  which  its  devotee  depends;  each  has  its 
way  of  saving  men  from  sensuality  and  selfishness ;  in 
each  of  them,  this  salvation  is  by  way  of  self-sacrifice 
and  devotion ;  and  each  of  them  is  an  imperishable  cause, 
greater  than  individual  aims,  invisible  and  calling  for  a 
launch  of  faith,  —  yet  for  the  same  reasons  more  per- 
manent than  personal  and  visible  things,  a  genuine 
supernatural  order,  capable  of  conferring  a  valid  im- 
mortality upon  the  good  and  faithful  servant.  If  there 
is  anything  in  an  identity  of  predicates,  the  identi- 
fication of  subjects  seems  irresistible.  Religion  is  one 
with  the  Arts;  it  is  her  immortality  to  continue  her 
life  in  them. 

If  we  ask  which  of  these  causes  contains  the  most  of 
religion,  the  trend  of  the  times  furnishes  an  answer,  as 
it  were  by  instinct.  It  has  frequently  been  observed  that 
these  several  ideals  or  'causes'  have  a  remarkable  power 
(due  no  doubt  to  their  family  likeness)  to  include  and 


THE  WORK  OF  RELIGION  IN  HISTORY  17 

involve  each  other :  the  worship  of  beauty,  for  instance, 
carries  with  it  normally  a  regard  for  the  requirements 
of  truth  and  sympathy,  and  conversely.  We  can  see  how 
any  one  of  these,  thoroughly  worked  out,  might  be  suf- 
ficient for  all :  while  still  any  one  of  them  taken  alone, 
as  men  are,  would  be  likely  to  give  life  a  skewed  pro- 
portion in  some  places,  since  the  supposed  working-out 
is  never  finished  —  the  artist  may  never  arrive  at  a  com- 
plete amalgamation  of  the  moral  with  the  beautiful,  the 
moralist  never  fully  unite  grace  and  harmony  with  his 
ideal  of  right.  It  is  the  cult  of  social  service  that  seems 
to  be  the  most  naturally  comprehensive,  and  to  engage 
most  fully  the  whole  religious  nature  of  man.  It  tends 
at  the  present  moment  somewhat  to  displace  the  rest, 
and  to  suck  up  the  enthusiasm  of  the  new  youth.  It 
gives  a  better  proportion :  it  can  unite  with  beauty,  but 
at  a  rate  which  does  not  part  men  from  the  actual  dirt 
and  disarray  of  social  facts;  it  can  unite  with  truth,  but 
if  it  is  a  matter  of  the  social  good,  or  the  religious  edu- 
cation of  children,  or  the  like, — well,  truth  also  can  stand 
in  its  due  order  and  degree,  it  may  seem.  But  no  matter 
which  one  of  the  offspring  of  religion  is  most  appealing 
at  any  time ;  religion  is  exhausted  into  no  one,  —  into 
nothing  less  than  the  totality  of  her  children.  The  point 
is,  that  this  totality,  however  found,  seems  an  equivalent 
for  passing  religion. 

A  corroboration  of  this  view  may  be  found  in  the  dis- 
tribution of  religion  in  the  world,  as  compared  with  the 
distribution  of  the  Arts.  Where  the  Arts  thrive  as  sep- 
arate interests,  religion  is  feeble.  The  zealous  religion 
of  to-day  is  at  home  in  the  life  of  the  peasantry,  of  the 
bourgeoisie,  —  wherever  life  is  still  simple  and  unified. 


18  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

For  here  it  is  still  the  whole  of  men's  art,  the  whole  of 
their  literature,  their  philosophy,  their  poetry  and  their 
music :  it  is  still  the  crude  integral  of  their  higher  life, 
and  should  they  lose  it  they  would  lose  all  that  distin- 
guishes their  existence.1  In  so  far  and  fast  as  they  grow 
into  possession  of  more  individual  forms  of  these  same 
values  they  incline  to  let  the  separate  practice  of  reli- 
gion lapse.1  Is  it  not  fair  to  say  that  there  are  few  of 
the  developed  individuals  of  our  time  who  with  either 
a  powerful  enthusiasm  for  a  single  branch  of  art,  or  a 
well-balanced  appreciation  of  what  we  call  our  culture, 
retain  in  addition  a  vigorous  religious  life  as  a  special 
direction  of  attention? 

If  we  accept  this  theory  of  the  function  of  religion 
in  history  and  of  its  destiny  to  merge  itself  with  the 
Arts,  we  can  read  with  greater  understanding  the  curious 
tale  of  religion's  antagonism  to  progress,  its  inertia,  ob- 
struction, conservatism.  We  can  readily  put  ourselves 
into  the  psychological  position  of  the  religious  partisan, 
in  whose  consciousness  the  spirits  of  the  several  Arts 
dwell  undistinguished,  and  all  of  whose  inspiration  has 
been  indeed  inseparable  from  his  piety.  We  shall  see  it 
as  inevitable  that  when  the  natural  processes  of  growth 
and  division  have  threatened  to  take  away  one  by  one 
architecture  and  sculpture,  science  and  political  control, 
from  the  sacred  auspices  under  which  they  took  their 
shape,  it  has  seemed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  priest 

1  Hoffding  remarks,  though  with  a  different  theory  for  the  case, 
"  The  more  men  are  absorbed  in  the  business  of  self-maintenance,  or  the 
more  they  are  given  up  to  intellectual,  aesthetic,  and  ethical  interests,  the 
more  the  strictly  religious  interest  falls  into  the  background  —  if  indeed 
it  does  not  entirely  disappear."  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  111. 


THE   WORK  OF  RELIGION  IN  HISTORY  19 

that  these  Arts  were  being  cut  loose  from  the  source  not 
only  of  their  inspiration  but  of  their  life ;  and  as  though 
violence  were  being  done  not  more  to  the  priesthood  or 
to  the  god  than  to  the  wayward  Art  itself  and  to  the 
world  beyond  which  fostered  it.  However  much  of 
'  priestcraft/  class-interest,  and  the  like  has  mingled  with 
these  motives  in  the  history  of  religious  obstruction, 
there  is  a  residuum  of  the  genuine  tragedy  of  all  growth, 
so  that  the  story  of  culture  must  henceforth  be  told  not 
as  a  story  of  "warfare  between  science  and  religion," 
but  as  an  infinitely  human  tale  of  growing  asunder,  with 
all  the  rending  of  veritable  bonds  and  loyalties  on  both 
sides  that  such  events  have  always  involved. 

While,  then,  we  understand  the  historic  attitude  of 
religion  to  these  changes,  as  dispassionate  observers  we 
must  regard  the  process  of  taking  human  possession  of 
any  art  as  an  advance;  and  hence  as  the  necessary  des- 
tiny of  whatever  religion  contains,  until  all  is  free.  The 
change  is  precisely  analogous  to  the  well-known  psy- 
chological process  of  getting  a  clear  concept  or  expres- 
sion for  what  has  been  lurking  in  the  mind  as  a  feeling, 
unsatisfactory,  haunting,  mysterious,  tantalizing.  Once 
the  adequate  expression  is  hit  upon,  the  cloudy  fringes 
of  the  experience  are  lifted;  the  hovering  sense  of  the 
infinite  and  ineffable  disappear  together  with  the  hu- 
miliating consciousness  of  impotence:  an  'idea*  is  born, 
and  the  human  self  is  in  possession.  Such  must  be  the 
career  of  all  influxes  to  the  spirit.  And  once  the  various 
possible  directions  of  mental  groping  have  been  differ- 
entiated and  established  in  our  common  life,  the  sepa- 
rate mission  of  religion  is  at  an  end. 


20  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

Religion  clothes  itself  to-day,  indeed,  in  all  the  Arts, 
and  in  philosophy  ;  but  beneath  these  garments,  what 
is  there  left  to  worship  —  unless,  perchance,  history  it- 
self ?  Instituted  religion  appears  among  us  as  a  survival, 
decked  out  in  relics  of  Arts  that  have  won  their  freedom. 
Or,  let  us  rather  say,  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  sacred  past 
which  organizes  and  sanctifies  these  relics,  providing  a 
place  where  the  Zeitgeist  may  worship  at  the  shrine  of 
its  own  emancipation.  Religion,  as  a  separate  object  of 
attention,  is  an  exhausted  parent,  cherished  in  her  de- 
cay through  some  sentiment  of  recognizance  by  the  Arts 
she  has  nourished, —  the  receiver,  but  no  longer  the 
giver  of  life. 

The  view  of  religion  above  sketched  is  a  view  more 
often  felt  than  professed.  It  represents  an  argument 
more  often  found  in  men's  lives  than  on  their  lips :  sug- 
gested more  by  the  tendencies  of  social  movement  than 
by  any  theories  that  are  acknowledged  among  us.  It  is 
well  to  become  expressly  conscious  of  these  facts  of  the 
progressive  substitution  of  Art  for  religion,  and  of  the 
view  of  religion  which  they  imply.  We  have  now  to  say 
what  we  think  of  this  view. 

So  much  must  be  admitted :  that  at  every  point  of 
progress  religion  is  a  sort  of  remainder,  —  the  residual 
inspiration  of  human  life.  And  at  each  stage  of  sub- 
traction, it  becomes  harder  to  see  that  there  is  any  fur- 
ther residuum.  What  remains,  if  anything  remains,  is 
relatively  formless,  as  compared  with  what  has  emerged. 
It  is  at  a  disadvantage  for  recognition.  Especially  when 
we  have  eliminated  morality  and  philosophy  from  the 
special  province  of  religion,  does  that  province  appear 


THE  WORK  OF  RELIGION  IN  HISTORY  21 

empty,  mystical,  barren  ;  and  the  position  of  those  who 
ignore  it  may  be  made  correspondingly  solid,  spiritually 
solid.  To-day  one  need  be  no  materialist,  no  mammonist, 
no  foe  of  morality  and  order,  no  selfish  or  unspiritual 
mind,  to  dispense  with  the  separate  practice  of  religion ; 
it  is  precisely  the  humane  and  the  ideal  of  temper,  men 
of  character  and  good-will,  who  by  common  consent  and 
their  own  are  likely  to  excuse  themselves  from  the  form, 
assuming  that  they  have  the  substance  —  this  is  the  most 
ominous  fact  that  religion,  as  a  distinctive  thing  in  the 
world,  has  now  to  face.  And  rather  than  face  it,  many 
of  her  supporters  hasten  to  save  a  weakening  cause  by 
accepting  the  identification  —  or  near-identification  — 
of  religion  with  some  Art  —  especially  with  morality  or 
with  human  service.  It  is  necessary  at  the  outset  of  our 
work,  in  the  interest  of  simple  clearness,  to  recognize 
this  tendency  for  what  it  is  —  a  confusion  and  a  breach 
of  faith.  Let  religion  vanish,  if  it  is  to  vanish  :  but 
know  that  it  is  impossible  —  in  any  sense  sanctioned 
by  history,  or  faith,  or  clear  reason — that  religion  should 
be  merged  with  any  Art,  or  with  all  Arts.  The  position 
of  religion  in  the  world  is,  and  has  been,  unique ;  and 
with  the  preservation  of  this  distinction  its  very  nature 
is  bound  up.  The  very  work  done  by  religion  in  the 
course  of  history  has  depended  —  despite  her  union 
with  the  Arts  —  on  the  clear  eminence,  above  all  her 
contact  with  affairs,  of  a  summit  which  is  No-art  and 
touched  by  no  Art. 

What  the  inner  nature  of  the  unique  element  in  religion 
maybe,  our  present  view  of  religion  does  not  and  need  not 
show.  Since  it  is  No-art  (and  Art  as  we  mean  it  includes 
everything  that  at  any  time  is  wholly  naturalized  and 


22  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

humanly  possessed)  it  will  be  for  any  time  somehow  un- 
possessed and  problematical,  and  may  for  the  present  be 
so  to  us.  What  our  view  of  the  effectiveness  of  religion 
in  history  does  at  once  make  evident  as  to  its  nature  is  — 
first,  its  necessary  distinction ;  second,  its  necessary  su- 
premacy. These  characters  though  external  have  been 
so  essential  to  its  f ruitf ulness,  as  to  justify  the  statement 
that  without  them  religion  is  not  religion.  A  merged 
religion  and  a  negligible  or  subordinate  religion  are  no  re- 
ligion. If  the  importance  of  religion  diminishes  as  Art 
progresses,  religion  must  disappear.  If  there  is  any  other 
way  of  life,  if  any  other  cause  can  act  as  a  passable  substi- 
tute, the  case  of  special  religion  is  lost.  It  is  lost  from  the 
side  of  Art,  because  every  Art  is  better  off  free,  on  its 
own  ground,  unencumbered  by  the  peculiar  apparatus 
and  terminology  of  religion.  It  is  lost  from  the  side  of 
life,  because  religion  as  a  separate  thing  is  the  most  diffi- 
cult and  expensive  of  all  means  to  an  end.  But  chiefly,  it 
is  lost  from  the  ground  of  its  own  character,  and  the  qual- 
ities which  alone  have  given  it  its  hold  upon  the  human 
mind.  Religion  is  already  gone  when  it  is  weighed  with 
or  subordinated  to  some  other  and  surer  value.  It  can 
only  be  held  to  on  the  supposition  that  it  is  necessary. 
Shorn  of  its  pride,  its  intolerance  of  rivals,  its  scorn  of 
comparison,  it  is  shorn  of  its  honor  also,  and  there- 
with of  all  that  defines  its  value.  Only  that  religion  can 
hold  attention  which  is  always  younger  than  the  youngest 
of  her  children,  more  fruitful  for  what  she  has  spent,  more 
needful  for  the  continued  life  of  the  Arts  than  for  their 
inception. 


THE   WORK   OF  RELIGION  IN   HISTORY  23 

It  is  here  chiefly  that  our  figure  is  defective.  For  the 
work  of  religion  is  a  perpetual  parentage  ;  the  status  of 
the  Arts  is  a  perpetual  dependence.  All  independence 
is  conceptual,  approximate,  and  relative.  The  inspira- 
tion, or  breathing,  of  all  the  Arts,  is,  in  the  final  trac- 
ing of  their  "  compartments,"  a  breathing  of  the  outer 
and  unlimited  air :  communication  of  this  sort  with  the 
Whole,  is  religion.  Or  let  us  say,  religion  is  the  func- 
tion of  in-letting,  or  osmosis,  between  the  human  spirit 
and  the  living  tissue  of  the  universe  wherein  it  is  eter- 
nally carried.  If  many  imagine  that  their  Art  is  their 
religion,  it  is  doubtless  so  far  true,  that  their  religion  is 
continuous  with  their  Art,  and  would  be  truncated  and 
deformed  without  it.  But  their  Art,  in  so  far  as  it  is 
still  capable  of  creation,  is  continuous  with  their  reli- 
gion —  a  vital  union  which  depends  strangely  enough 
on  the  consciously-held  distinction  between  them. 

Is  our  present  age  an  age  of  originality,  or  is  it  rather 
an  age  in  which  Art  gnaws  its  nails  for  sustenance  ? 
this  age  —  in  which  every  Interest  has  its  own  head 
and  its  own  way  as  never  before  !  Freedom  to  us  means 
reasonableness  ;  and  reasonableness  means  that  every- 
thing is  referred  to  sources  of  its  own  kind.  Thus,  we 
refer  public  effects  to  public  forces,  —  not  to  royal 
fiat, — and  this  is  political  freedom.  We  refer  material 
effects  to  material  causes,  not  to  divine  or  human  will, 
—  and  this  is  scientific  freedom.  We  respect  the  family 
privacy  of  the  different  parts  or  groups  of  the  cosmos, 
— thereby  each  such  group  is  given  its  freedom.  None 
but  fine-art-considerations  shall  have  an  entree  to  fine- 
art-work-shops.  The  rights  of  individuals  to  their  own 
spheres  and  provinces,  the  right  to  be  tried  by  one's  own 


24  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

kind,  even  to  be  punished  by  nothing  but  the  logic  of 
one's  own  crime,  —  we  care  for  these  rights,  but  they 
are  not  by  any  means  the  only  rights  we  care  for :  we 
treasure  the  private  rights  of  Ideas,  of  Abstractions. 
Every  Principle  has  its  own  belongings,  every  Concep- 
tion has  its  own  circle  of  Relations  which  must  not  be 
intruded  upon  by  the  unfit  and  extraneous.  It  is  the 
technique  of  living  to  learn  and  feel  all  these  personal 
and  abstract  Owns,  — all  the  proprieties  and  freedoms, 
not  to  mingle  Business  with  Personalities,  not  to  lug  in 
Politics  when  one  is  in  Society,  not  to  test  Humor  by 
canons  of  Science,  still  less  bring  Humor  into  the  con- 
templation of  Religion.  One  word  is  equivalent  to  our 
culture  —  '  Discrimination.'  Yes,  there  was  never  so 
much  freedom  in  the  world  as  now,  i.e.,  there  were 
never  so  many  Owns  to  be  learned  and  respected.  But 
this  world  of  Owns  is  a  noble  mesh  of  surfaces  that 
would  be  closed,  but  cannot  be.  It  is  in  some  sense 
a  failure,  a  necessary  and  mysterious  failure,  likely 
to  die  of  its  tight-held  freedoms  and  independences,  its 
clear-cut-nesses  and  non-intrusions.  Religion  it  is  that 
knows  the  point  of  this  failure.  Religion  holds  self- 
sufficiency  in  derision  ;  religion  is  the  comprehensive 
irony  of  the  world  toward  all  Owns.  In  opening  every 
Art  toward  itself,  it  opens  each  toward  every  other : 
through  No-art  all  Arts  become  one,  and  one  life 
courses  through  all  of  them. 

Our  arts  are  parcelled  out  much  as  we  sometimes 
parcel  out  and  enumerate  human  instincts.  Every  in- 
stinct naturally  has  an  art  —  i.e.,  a  way  of  finding  sat- 
isfaction ;  on  the  other  hand,  every  primary  art,  broadly 
speaking,  corresponds  to,  and  helps  to  define  '  an  in- 


THE  WORK  OF  RELIGION  IN  HISTORY  25 

stinct.'  But  no  one  can  make  a  satisfactory  list  of  the 
instincts,  or  of  the  primitive  impulses,  of  man :  for  in 
the  human  being  they  have  so  far  mixed  and  braided 
and  fused,  as  their  objects  have  developed,  that  listing 
becomes  arbitrary.  The  truth  is,  they  belong  together  ; 
and  in  our  modes  of  living  find  their  way  together  : 
love  and  hunger  meet  in  the  family,  hunger  and  defense 
in  the  civic  community,  love  and  defense  in  the  war- 
gang.  (This  absurd  list  of  instincts  will  serve  as  well 
as  another  to  show  the  point.)  Now  in  religion  all  in- 
stincts meet.  Destined  as  they  are  to  come  to  terms 
with  each  other  in  human  society,  religion  engages 
them  all,  keeps  them  in  yoke  together  until  they  make 
friends.  Just  as  we  found  in  all  Arts  the  outlines  of 
religious  action,  so  every  instinct,  in  what  it  deeply 
drives  toward,  shows  the  traits  of  religious  aspiration. 
The  life  of  an  instinct  and  the  continuous  inspiration 
of  the  corresponding  art  are  the  same  thing :  creativity 
in  some  sort  is  what  satisfies  and  alone  satisfies  every 
instinct,  and  creativity  is  precisely  what  religion  calls  out 
in  them,  in  the  process  of  holding  them  to  their  own 
unity. 

Bergson  has  told  us  that  all  originality  is  derived 
from  sensation:  this  is  but  part  of  the  truth.  Origi- 
nality is  derived  from  the  primitive.  Religion,  "  the 
crude  integral  of  the  Arts,"  is  primitive  as  sensation  is 
primitive,  fundamental  to  knowledge  as  sensation  is 
fundamental  to  knowledge  —  at  the  opposite  pole  :  and 
creativity  comes  not  from  sensation  alone  (though  not 
without  sensation),  but  from  sensation  warmed  and  wet 
by  the  sky  of  religion.  And  back  to  mother-earth, 
to  the  cruder  mind  which  knows  its  own  integrity,  shall 


26  KELIGION  AS  SEEN   IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

we  go,  unless  in  holding  to  the  severalty  and  freedom 
of  our  Arts  and  Owns,  we  are  able  to  hold  with  equal 
strength  to  that  which  is  other  than  all  of  them,  the 
source  of  their  creativity  and  the  channel  of  their  union. 

Herewith,  then,  I  have  expressed  quite  dogmatically 
a  conviction  regarding  the  function  of  religion  in  his- 
tory and  society,  a  function  which  throws  some  light 
upon  its  nature.  Only  the  completion  of  our  whole  task 
can  bring  adequate  substance  into  these  wide  outlines. 
What  the  process  of  religion  in  the  mind  of  man  may 
be  through  which  these  creative  results  take  place,  we 
have  not  begun  to  enquire.  We  shall  come  nearer  to 
religion  itself  in  our  next  study  —  the  effects  of  religion 
in  individual  life. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  TRAITS   OF  RELIGION  IN  PERSONS 

WE  know  religion  when  we  meet  it  in  persons.  We  |j 
are  in  no  need  of  definition  to  guide  our  eyes,  or 
to  help  in  identifying  it.  We  are  perpetually  seeing  its 
fruits,  or  missing  them,  in  our  neighbors.  We  are  sen- 
sitive even  to  its  shades  and  degrees  ;  aware  of  its  more 
or  less,  its  depth,  its  texture,  its  resistance.  Indeed,  we 
are  instinctive  connoisseurs  on  this  subject,  every  son  of 
Adam,  —  because  religion  is  a  human  property,  not  a 
property  of  culture.  An  errand-boy  can  detect  as  well 
as  any  psychologist  the  falsetto  in  an  assumed  devout- 
ness;  is  as  keen  to  mark  the  fatal  note  of  economy  in  an 
accent  pious  from  habit ;  is  cut  as  quickly  by  the  leap 
of  the  true  flame,  no  matter  from  what  covering. 

And  this  holds  good  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  a  man's 
religion  is  the  hiddenest  thing  in  him.  Hidden  in  large 
part  from  himself.  Let  him  try  with  might  and  main  to 
give  a  true  estimate  of  his  own, —  his  word  for  it  is  no 
better  than  mine  :  the  thing  is  too  close  to  himself  to  be 

O 

well  seen  by  him.  But  for  that  very  reason  our  percep- 
tion of  it  in  him  is  conveyed  immediately  with  our  sense 
of  the  fiber  of  the  person.  It  is  as  if  a  man's  religion 
and  his  personal  quality  were  in  large  measure  inter- 
changeable terms.  We  take  our  impression  of  it  in- 
voluntarily, and  this  impression  becomes  one  of  the 
most  stubborn  of  human  opinions :  if  the  alternative  is 


28  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

pressed  upon  us  of  doubting  a  man  in  whom  we  have 
met  this  absolute  worth,  or  of  doubting  an  institution 
or  tradition  which  damns  him  on  its  technicalities,  we 
may  find  ourselves  loosing  our  feet  from  the  institution. 
In  such  and  such  an  atheist  or  doubter  of  the  Trinity 
or  happy-go-lucky  liver  we  may  have  caught  some  deep 
flash  of  the  trait  we  call  religious,  and  we  sit  strangely 
secure  in  the  prospect  of  his  future  destiny.  The  power 
of  religious  dogmas  is  limited,  and  their  edge  slowly 
turned,  by  the  unwaivable  weight  of  this  court  which  sits 
in  permanent  judgment  upon  their  judgments. 

Our  perception  of  religion,  like  any  other  instinctive 
perception,  can  doubtless  be  sophisticated  and  work  false. 
It  holds  its  truth  with  difficulty  in  the  presence  of  pre- 
judice, theological  interest,  and  passion.  Even  so,  it  is 
possible  to  describe  in  the  large  the  kind  of  thing 
which  in  persons  we  pronounce  the  traits  of  religion. 
The  world  has  not  been  poor  in  characters  in  whom  the 
quality  is  present  in  such  abundance  as  to  carry  our  af- 
firmative beyond  a  doubt ;  with  these  in  mind  we  shall 
be  able  to  characterize  at  least  its  outward  appearance. 

That  which  chiefly  marks  the  religious  soul  is  a  fear- 
less and  original  valuation  of  things.  Its  judgments 
emerge  somehow  from  solitude,  as  if  it  had  resources 
and  data  of  its  own  sufficient  to  determine  its  attitudes 
without  appeal  to  the  bystander,  as  if  by  fresh  contact 
with  truth  itself,  it  were  sure  of  its  own  justice.  It  may 
treat  objects  which  we  pass  as  ordinary  as  if  they  were 
not  ordinary  ;  distinguished  matters  may  seem  reduced 
in  its  eyes  to  the  commonplace.  It  lives  as  if  seeing 
reality  where  neither  physical  eye  nor  practical  judg- 


THE  TRAITS  OF  RELIGION   IN  PERSONS  29 

ment  see  anything ;  and  it  makes  material  sacrifices  for 
this  faith.  Its  original  valuation  is  seen  also  in  what 
it  fails  to  do,  equally  with  what  it  does.  It  seems  not 
to  display  the  common  need  to  escape  from  some  of  the 
unpleasant  facts  of  experience  —  to  edge  away  from  cer- 
tain passages,  to  hurry  through  with  certain  inevitable 
others.  It  behaves  as  if  no  present  experience  could 
utterly  oppress  it,  as  if  indeed  all  circumstance  brought 
by  history  to  its  share  might  be  received  with  respect, 
almost  with  deference,  as  significant  and  right,  not  ac- 
cidental. It  is  not  as  one  immune  from  suffering  that 
the  religious  spirit  moves  in  the  severer  passes  of  its 
career,  but  as  one  willing  to  accept  and  able  to  entertain 
suffering  in  the  solemn  adequacy  of  its  own  peculiar 
insight. 

But  this  originality  and  this  freedom  are  strangely 
united  with  an  opposite  quality,  necessity.  The  certi- 
tude of  the  religious  spirit  is  so  poised  by  an  inward  bond 
that  it  conveys  no  impression  of  personal  self-assertion. 
Its  wisdom  does  not  emanate  from  itself  alone,  is  in  some 
paradoxical  fashion  both  original  and  derivative :  it  has 
the  air  of  being  less  a  product  of  individual  force  than 
a  result  of  profound  partnership  with  some  invisible 
source  of  wisdom.  The  anxiety  and  burden  of  a  self- 
maintained  position  are  by  this  fact  removed  ;  the  spirit 
is  freed  from  itself  by  mooring  in  some  objective  reality 
constantly  present  to  its  consciousness. 

And  so  also  there  is  no  sign  of  the  strain  which  we 
associate  with  moral  or  courageous  effort.  The  motive 
of  religion  is  unlike  that  of  an  idea  or  principle  which 
evokes  a  dominant  sense  of  exertion  and  sacrifice:  it  is 
rather  like  that  of  a  deep  passion  which  possesses  and 


30  RELIGION   AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

supports  the  soul,  and  cancels  with  a  margin  of  its  own 
strength  any  opposing  motion.  In  brief,  this  person  has 
meat  to  eat  which  we  who  look  on  know  not  of;  and  here 
lies  the  mystery  and  the  fascination  of  religion  as  it 
moves  about  in  the  world.  It  is  the  fascination  not 
only  of  assurance,  but  of  the  sufficiency,  the  simplicity, 
the  natural  necessity,  with  which  it  utters  its  novelties, 
moves  its  mountains,  and  ushers  in  its  revolutions. 

If  its  relations  to  its  invisible  Object,  held  inviolate 
with  anxious  care,  are  such  as  to  unbind  it  in  some  wise 
from  men,  they  are  also  such  as  to  bind  powerfully  to  it- 
self whoever  enters  the  sphere  of  its  action.  It  may  seem 
that  this  Object  is  such  only  as  men  must  serve  if  they 
will  best  serve  each  other.  It  endows  the  judgments  of 
the  religious  soul,  original  as  they  are,  not  with  a  lower 
but  with  a  higher  human  currency,  —  as  if  that  Object 
were  but  reality  itself.  The  burden  of  eccentricity  is 
thrown  upon  our  common  behavior,  not  on  that  of  re- 
ligion. The  words  and  actions  of  the  religious  man  be- 
come authoritative  for  the  world  of  men.  In  becoming 

o 

free,  he  has  also  become  obedient  to  some  necessity; 
and  in  becoming  obedient  he  has  become  universal. 

Surely  the  religious  spirit  is  living  as  if  immortality 
were  its  share.  What  its  source  of  judgment  and  power 
may  be  we  have  yet  to  discover,  but  in  its  valid  origi- 
nality, and  in  its  emancipation  from  the  stress  and  haste 
of  the  temporal  current,  we  may  see  a  present  possession 
of  that  to  which  the  secular  spirit  presses  forward.  That 
worth-of-life  which  is  commonly  held  as  imaginary,  pro- 
spective, hypothetical,  has  become  to  it  a  matter  as  it  were 
of  sensation,  immediate  and  inescapable.  That  which 


THE  TRAITS  OF  RELIGION  IN  PERSONS  31 

to  men  otherwise  is  but  the  word  has  to  its  knowledge 
become  flesh.  Such  present  possession  of  the  distant 
sources  of  worth  and  certainty  has  been  called  "faith"; 
it  is  the  characteristic  of  religion  in  all  ages. 

Here  lies  the  essential  distinction  between  religion 
and  the  Arts  on  the  ground  of  personal  experience. 
Art  is  long;  religion  is  immediate.  The  attainment  in 
every  Art  is  future,  infinitely  distant ;  the  attainment  of 
religion  is  present.  Religion  indeed  involves  a  present 
possession  in  some  sort  of  the  very  objects  which  the 
Arts  infinitely  seek.  Knowledge,  for  example,  is  an  in- 
finite quest  in  the  order  of  nature,  —  and  in  it  there  is 
no  absolute  certainty  but  only  a  growing  probability 
and  approximation :  but  the  religious  soul  knows  now 
— and  that  without  losing  interest  in  the  slow  movement 
of  science.  Human  brotherhood  also  is  an  infinite 
problem  —  men  have  to  be  made  brothers,  and  the 
whole  of  history  is  requisite  to  tell  the  tale  of  achieving 
that  end :  but  in  religion  men  are  already  brothers  and 
experience  their  brotherhood  in  the  moment  of  common 
worship.  So  with  morality :  in  time  my  moral  task  will 
never  be  finished,  for  my  imperfection  is  infinite  and 
my  progress  by  small  degrees ;  but  religion  calls  upon 
me  to  be  perfect  at  once  even  as  God  is  perfect,  and  in 
religion  somehow  I  am  perfect.  By  this  contrast  we  are 
helped  to  describe,  still  problematically,  but  with  much 
greater  nearness  than  before,  the  nature  of  religion. 

Religion,  we  may  now  say,  is  the  present  attainment 
in  a  single  experience  of  those  objects  which  in  the 
course  of  nature  are  reached  only  at  the  end  of  infinite 
progression.  Religion  is  anticipated  attainment. 


32  RELIGION   AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

This  precursory  definition  of  religion  serves  the  pur- 
pose of  such  definitions  —  not  to  solve  problems,  but 
rather  to  open  them.  In  religion,  we  say,  men  live  as  if 
in  presence  of  attainment,  of  knowledge,  of  immortality: 
but  in  what  respect  is  the  attainment  present  when  in 
the  order  of  nature  it  must  still  remain  at  an  infinite  dis- 
tance? What  sort  of  present  satisfaction  is  that  which 
can  still  leave  the  individual  involved  in  the  unending 
struggle  ?  We  have  indeed  ceased  to  respect  as  reli- 
gious any  state  of  mind  which  withdraws  the  subject  from 
sympathy  or  alliance  with  the  age-long  human  labor. 
Whatever  may  be  the  nature  of  that  anticipation  of  all 
attainment,  genuine  religion  is  not  inclined  —  as  far  as 
hard  work  goes  —  to  take  advantage  of  its  advantage. 
If  being  in  the  world  it  is  not  of  the  world,  it  is  none 
the  less  with  the  world  and  for  it —  in  brief,  in  for  it, 
and  with  no  loss  of  power.  That  is  an  extraordinary 
attainment  which  one  must  still  labor  forever  to  possess : 
but  just  this  paradox  is  inherent  in  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, and  opens  the  way  to  a  fundamental  question 
as  to  its  nature. 

For  something  of  this  same  paradoxical  character  we 
find  in  certain  kinds  of  knowledge :  there  are  insights 
which  come  in  a  moment,  and  yet  have  to  be  kept  by 
endless  vigilance  —  as  men  keep  their  liberty.  The 
peculiar  possession  of  religion  is  often  spoken  of  in 
terms  of  knowledge,  as  wisdom ,  vision,  revelation, 
truth.  But  there  are  reasons  for  doubting  whether 
religion  is,  literally  speaking,  a  kind  of  knowledge. 
Whatever  it  is,  it  cannot  readily  be  translated  into 
valid  ideas  and  language.  Its  secret  is  one  which  the 
religious  spirit  tries  not  to  keep  but  to  give  away  —  and 


THE   TRAITS  OF  RELIGION   IN  PERSONS  33 

cannot.  But  what  is  a  knowledge  that  cannot  be 
expressed,  communicated,  or  thought?  And  further, 
thought  is  but  one  of  those  same  Arts  which  (as  science 
or  philosophy)  is  a  product  of  religion,  together  with 
politics,  poetry,  and  all  other  forms  of  human  expres- 
sion. How  then  can  religion  itself  be  a  matter  of  know- 
ledge? 

When  we  speak  of  religion  in  terms  of  thought,  is  it 
not  according  to  that  loose  and  general  usage  which  ap- 
plies the  word  thought  to  all  that  is  inward  and  free  in 
men  ?  '  As  a  man  thinketh  in  his  heart,  so  is  he  '  — • 
that  is  to  say,  as  a  man  orients  himself,  as  he  *  makes 
up  his  mind/  as  he  feels  his  way  in  the  practical  anti- 
theses of  existence.  Is  it  not  more  probable,  in  terms 
of  psychological  fact,  that  religion  consists  in  a  practical 
attitude  of  mind,  or  a  mode  of  feeling  —  say  in  practi- 
cal confidence,  optimism,  good-will,  enthusiasm  for  what 
is  real,  the  power  to  penetrate  shams  that  goes  with 
these  things  ?  A  disposition  of  this  sort,  an  inward  cer- 
titude or  faith,  is  indeed  an  anticipated  attainment, '  the 
substance  of  things  hoped  for '  —  but  in  more  primi- 
tive form  than  knowledge,  in  the  form,  briefly  speaking, 
of  feeling. 

We  have  now  to  deal  with  this  view  that  religion  is 
a  matter  of  feeling.  We  may  agree  to  use  the  word 
feeling  for  the  present  in  a  very  wide  sense  —  as  a 
name  for  whatever  in  consciousness,  deeper  than  ex- 
plicit thought,  is  able  to  give  a  bent  to  conduct.  Feel- 
ing is  not,  as  we  sometimes  think  it,  a  wholly  vague  and 
uncertain  principle :  it  is  capable  of  bearing  much  re- 
sponsibility in  the  direction  of  practical  living.  In  the 
form  of  moral  disposition,  it  may  be  the  highest,  as  well 


34  RELIGION  AS  SEEN  IN  ITS  EFFECTS 

as  the  most  individual,  determinant  of  conduct  and  bear- 
ing. The  question  whether  religion  belongs  to  this 
realm  of  practical  and  responsible  feeling  rather  than 
to  the  realm  of  thought  is  an  issue  of  greater  practi- 
cal interest  than  may  appear  in  this  formal  statement ; 
it  will  engage  us  for  some  time. 


PART  II 

RELIGIOUS  FEELING 

AND 
RELIGIOUS  THEORY 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT 

THE  intellect  has  evidently  been  assuming  too  much 
importance,  not  only  in  religion  but  in  life  at  large. 
Hardly  otherwise  would  so  much  satisfaction  be  taken 
in  showing  this  quite  human  organ  to  its  subordinate 
place,  so  much  eagerness  in  putting  our  valuables  into 
some  other  custody.  Wherever  our  likes  and  dislikes 
are  concerned,  as  in  appreciations  of  beauty,  moral 
Tightness,  and  other  values,  logic  is  persona  non  grata 
—  at  least  in  its  own  name.  Since  the  impressive  effort 
of  Kant  to  mark  out  a  strictly  limited  province  for  the 
valid  use  of  the  theoretical  reason  —  a  province  which 
all  our  major  human  interests  lie  safely  outside  of  — 
thinkers  of  the  first  rank  (with  exceptions,  but  with 
singular  accord)  have  added  some  stroke  to  the  picture 
of  reason's  retirement,  representing  it  as  servant  of  the 
will,  or  as  tool  and  creature  of  some  darker  and  more 
primal  reality  —  blind  impulse,  immediate  feeling,  the 
unconscious.  In  religion  more  than  elsewhere  the  intel- 
lectual disaffection  is  sweeping.  One  who  now  ventures 
to  discuss  religion  from  the  side  of  cosmology  as  a  "  the- 
ory of  original  causation  "  seems  to  be  strangely  remote 
from  the  point ;  the  inoffensive  words,  creed,  dogma, 
theology,  are  almost  words  of  reproach.  The  whole  ap- 
paratus of  reason  in  religion  has  retreated  in  impor- 


38       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

tance,  in  favor  of  a  more  substantial  basis  —  which  we 
have  agreed  to  call  feeling.1 

This  retirement  of  the  intellect  is  not  altogether  a  re- 
sult of  free  research.  So  far  as  religion  is  concerned,  it 
strongly  resembles  a  forced  conclusion.  It  comes  from 
holding  tenaciously  to  the  immense  importance  of  re- 
ligion, while  despairing  of  finding  for  it  any  intellectual 
content  having  equal  importance,  or  equal  stability  or 
accessibility.  The  ideas  of  religion,  whether  in  the 
form  of  metaphysics  or  of  revealed  truth,  have  not  been 
able  to  command  that  respect  and  loyalty  which  is  readily 
given  to  religion  itself.  We  are  driven  to  confess  that 
we  actually  care  more  for  religion  than  we  do  for  reli- 

1  The  following  may  be  taken  as  typical  expressions  of  the  tendency 
to  give  feeling  the  primacy  in  religion : 

Es  ist  seit  Schleiermacher  ein  anerkannter  Grundsatz,  dass  der 
innerste  und  eigentliche  Kern  der  Religion  im  Gefiihl  zu  suchen  sei. 
E.  von  Hartmann.  Religion  des  Geistes,  p.  28. 

Not  only  can  religious  knowledge  never  cast  off  its  subjective  char- 
acter ;  it  is  in  reality  nothing  but  that  very  subjectivity  of  piety  con- 
sidered in  its  action  and  in  its  legitimate  development.  A.  Sabatier. 
Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  310. 

I  believe  that  the  logical  reason  of  man  operates  in  this  field  of  divin- 
ity exactly  as  it  has  always  operated  in  love,  or  in  patriotism,  or  in  any 
other  of  the  wider  affairs  of  life  in  which  our  passions  or  our  mystical  in- 
tuitions fix  our  beliefs  beforehand.  It  finds  arguments  for  our  convictions, 
for  indeed  it  has  to  find  them.  It  amplifies  and  defines  our  faith,  and 
dignifies  it,  and  lends  it  words  and  plausibility.  It  hardly  ever  engenders 
it  ;  it  cannot  now  secure  it.  William  James.  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience,  p.  436. 

Religious  experience  is  essentially  religious  feeling.  H.  Hoffding. 
The  Philosophy  of  Religion  (tr.  Meyer),  p.  106. 

What  the  future  of  religion  is  to  be  no  one  can  tell.  Of  this,  how- 
ever, I  think  we  may  be  sure  :  religious  belief  will  stand  or  fall  with  what 
I  have  called  the  Religion  of  Feeling.  J.  B.  Pratt.  Psychology  of  Re- 
ligious Belief,  p.  302. 


THE  RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT  39 

gious  theories  and  ideas  :  and  in  merely  making  that  dis- 
tinction between  religion  and  its  doctrine-elements,  have 
we  not  already  relegated  the  latter  to  an  external  and 
subordinate  position  ?  Have  we  not  asserted  that  "  re- 
ligion itself"  has  some  other  essence  or  constitution 
than  mere  idea  or  thought  ?  We  are  in  need  of  some 
other  foundation  for  our  faith. 

The  proposal,  then,  that  religion  may  be  sufficiently 
founded  on  feeling  comes  with  too  great  promise  of  re- 
lief to  be  lightly  dismissed.  Grant  it,  and  all  dogmatic 
authority  loses  its  pressure  at  once.  We  are  set  free  to 
be  religious  beings  without  the  infinite  argument  and 
haggling  over  unreachable  and  untestable  propositions. 
Creeds  we  wave  aside  ;  —  or  else,  we  carry  them  lightly, 
knowing  that  they  are  at  one  stroke  dehorned,  put  out  of 
conflict  with  truth  as  otherwise  established.  We  need 
not  any  longer  take  their  clauses  to  task  seriatim  and 
verbatim ;  we  are  free  to  utter  the  whole,  if  we  will,  as 
a  single  expression  of  the  feeling  we  call  faith,  as  the 
historic  voice  of  a  total  confidence  in  destiny.  Who  can 
deny  that  we  do  thereby  come  nearer  to  the  intimate 
sense  of  our  creeds  ?  Further,  if  the  essence  of  religion 
is  feeling,  it  is  to  be  judged  by  feeling  and  not  by  ar- 
gument, —  it  is  to  be  judged  as  beauty  and  right  are 
judged  :  we  are  not  only  at  liberty  to  bring  our  instincts 
to  bear,  we  are  compelled  to  bring  them  to  bear,  —  a 
responsibility  from  which  we  too  easily  escape  when  re- 
ligion is  gained  by  accepting  a  creed.  Who  will  say 
that  this  requirement  is  not  more  adapted  than  the  old 
one  to  keep  alive  the  spirit  of  genuine  religion  ?  That 
forced  conclusion  which  has  driven  religion  from  intel- 
lect toward  feeling  may  thus  prove  a  literal  god-send  to 


40       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

religion.  But  there  are  other  grounds  for  this  change ; 
it  is,  in  fact,  the  outcome  of  converging  tendencies  so 
various  that  they  can  only  be  called  the  labor  of  an  age. 
Some  of  these  we  shall  pass  in  review. 

The  comparison  of  religions,  whenever  historical 
movements  (whether  crusades,  or  conquests,  or  missions) 
have  made  comparison  inevitable,  has  always  led  to  some 
doubting  of  the  face- value  of  creeds :  for  the  alien  re- 
ligion has  always  made  some  appeal  to  that  instinctive 
knowledge  of  religion  which  we  have  said  is  a  possession 
of  human  nature.  Especially  is  this  true  of  that  deliber- 
ate scientific  comparison  of  religions  which  in  our  own 
time  has  yielded  so  great  wealth  of  historical  knowledge. 
For  this  wealth  has  required  of  us  a  penetrating  effort  to 
conceive  the  essence  of  religion  in  its  world-wide  iden- 
tity :  in  which  effort  we  have  been  steadily  drawn  back 
of  religious  ideas  to  something  more  fundamental. 
Men's  religions,  we  cannot  help  seeing,  are  much  more 
alike  than  the  explanations  and  expressions  they  give 
for  them.  Diverse  as  are  myths,  prophecies,  eschatolo- 
gies,  angelologies,  and  the  rest,  religious  feeling  is  much 
the  same  the  world  over.  When  identical  values  thus 
attach  themselves  to  quite  different  ideas,  it  cannot  re- 
main in  doubt  where  the  substance  of  the  matter  lies. 
Theories  which  have  varied  so  much  might  vary  further 
ad  libitum,  and  religion  still  do  its  common  human 
work.  The  thing  is  indispensable ;  the  ideas  that  have 
been  connected  with  it  are,  with  all  their  mystery  and 
ambiguity,  perennial  causes  of  discord,  misunderstand- 
ing, division  without  compensating  benefit.  It  is  a 
pious  wish  to  be  rid  of  them  all,  if  it  were  possible,  and 


THE  RETIREMENT  OF  THE   INTELLECT  41 

let  mankind  flow  to  its  proper  unity  in  the  substance 
of  religion,  in  the  feelings  which  all  men  share. 

A  similar  impression  is  made  by  the  life-histories  of 
religious  movements,  as  we  are  now  able  to  understand 
them.  Religion  renews  its  life  in  great  bursts  of  impulse 
which  emanate  not  from  new  thoughts,  but  from  rarely 
impressive  personalities,  capable  of  inspiring  exalted 
and  passionate  devotion  in  their  friends  and  followers. 
Their  utterances  are  poetic,  oracular,  couched  in  figure 
and  parable,  not  in  theses.  While  their  power  and 
meaning  seems  to  be  propagating  itself  by  the  medium- 
ship  of  words  and  thoughts,  it  is  in  reality  propagating 
itself  immediately,  by  infection,  by  contact,  by  the  laying 
on  of  hands,  by  the  leaping-across  of  an  overmastering 
fire.  In  the  presence  of  such  men,  leaders  and  carriers, 
others  are  lifted,  not  to  high  knowledge,  but  indeed  to  a 
high  degree  of  moral  potency  which  is  capable  of  exe- 
cuting great  deeds,  sometimes  upon  the  most  visionary 
basis.  With  the  rise  of  the  critical  business  of  thinking 
and  philosophizing  the  decline  of  religious  vitality  keeps 
even  step.  As  passion  cools,  theology  spreads ;  and  as 
theology  spreads,  passion  cools  still  more.  Remoteness 
from  religious  leadership  can  infallibly  be  read  in  the 
conditions  of  religious  life  in  a  given  place  or  age. 
The  stream  which  at  its  source  is  impetuous,  fierce, 
channel-plowing,  here  at  its  mouth  lies  lazy,  divided, 
straggling  off  to  the  dead-level  of  religious  homogeneity, 
through  the  arms  of  shallow,  reasoning  sects,  where  (by 
the  very  multitude  of  distinctions  between  the  believers) 
there  is  hardly  any  more  distinction  between  river  and 
bank,  saint  and  sinner. 

The  making  of  creeds,  it  is  true,  has  never  been  a 


42       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

purely  theoretical  interest ;  creeds  have  had  important 
social  functions :  but  these  functions,  we  think,  do  not 
lead  us  to  love  them  more.  For  creed-making  belongs 
to  the  eras  of  political-religious  propagandism  stage 
through  which  especially  the  religions  of  Buddha,  Jesus, 
and  Mohammed  have  passed  lingering.  Creeds  have 
served  as  weapons  of  warfare  and  persecution  and  inner 
partisan  rivalries.  Disfavor  towards  the  polemic  method 
of  religious  promotion  thus  adds  itself  to  the  distrust 
of  intellect,  in  the  rise  of  the  religion  of  feeling. 

But  these  comparative  and  historical  judgments  upon 
religion  are  themselves  results,  and  hard- won  results,  of 
longer  circuits  of  human  labor ;  circuits  which  flow  wide 
of  any  special  religious  interest,  impinging  upon  reli- 
gion only  after  coursing  through  the  whole  range  of 
scientific  experience.  It  is  not  our  religious  instinct 
alone,  but  something  much  like  an  acquired  scientific 
instinct  which  sends  us  looking  to-day  among-  the  feel- 
ing-roots of  religion  for  its  ultimate  essence.1  Into  the 
building  of  that  scientific  instinct  have  entered  many 
strands,  of  which  it  will  be  sufficient  for  us  to  consider 
four  —  the  psychological,  the  biological,  the  pragmatic, 
the  critical. 

1  Is  there  not  much  eloquence,  for  example,  in  the  high  value  which 
is  accorded  to  simple  and  emotional  religious  experience  in  the  psycho- 
logical workshop  ?  What  is  it  but  an  instinctive  expression  of  the  defer- 
ence which  intellect  pays  to  religion  as  to  a  foreign  power,  that  the  investi- 
gator looks  so  eagerly  into  the  humblest  corners  to  bring  to  light  its 
pearls  —  or  seeks  to  lure  it  into  his  presence  by  means  of  the  wily  ques- 
tionnaire? Surely,  if  the  material  of  religious  life  must  be  thus  sought, 
it  is  something  other,  in  essence,  than  the  thought  which  seeks  it.  This 
humble,  empirical  attitude  of  the  scholar  toward  religion  is  indeed  the 
most  convincing  acknowledgment  that  thought  finds  here  something  other 
than  itself. 


THE  RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT  43 

I  must  speak  broadly  in  all  these  matters;  dealing 
with  general  tendencies,  not  with  the  work  of  individual 
men :  dealing  also  for  the  most  part  with  older  tendencies, 
such  as  have  had  time  to  pass  into  our  mental  habits, 
not  with  views  now  rising. 

First,  then,  of  the  psychological  current  of  thought : 
our  world  is  thoroughly  leavened  by  the  conviction  that 
nothing  is  real  unless  it  belongs  to  conscious  experience. 
Philosophers  wonderfully  agree  in  accepting  the  term 
"  experience  "  as  a  comprehensive  name  for  whatever  is 
either  real  or  significant.  Facts  and  events  may  have 
their  independent  external  existence ;  but  they  gain  liv- 
ing certainty  and  importance  only  as  they  impinge  upon 
consciousness.  Unless  a  fact  is  caught  in  the  circuit 
of  a  self ;  unless  somewhere  it  reports  to  the  sensitive, 
irritable,  responsive  thing  we  call  a  mind,  it  is  nothing. 
It  is  the  inner  event  that  is  solid :  the  status  of  matter, 
of  energy,  of  all  external  objects,  is  doubtful;  the  '  outer 
world'  is  best  understood  by  relation  to  the  inner 
world,  as  a  stimulus,  or  as  even  less  than  a  stimulus. 

The  result  of  this  conviction  is  that  we  incline  to 
unravel  every  science  from  its  inner  end,  from  its 
psychological  insertion.  Where  have  we  to  look  for 
the  sources  of  public  events,  the  making  of  states,  the 
development  of  crafts,  the  making  and  managing  of 
political  movements,  the  shaping  of  ideals?  To  human 
instincts,  to  "  human  nature."  There  is  no  theory  of 
politics,  of  economics,  of  law,  of  morals,  nor  of  religion 
either,  that  can  now  dispense  with  its  psychological 
groundwork.  Skill  in  self-knowledge,  in  tracing  the 
psychical  factors  of  all  institutions  and  of  all  history  : 
this  is  the  predominant  habit  and  technique  of  our 


44      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

scientific  age.    No  such  surefooted  exploring  of  the  inner 
man  has  ever  before  been  known. 

But  all  this  psychological  habit  (lineal  descendent  of  a 
subjective  sort  of  idealism)  brings  with  it  the  depreciation 
of  idea  in  favor  of  feeling.  For  ideas  and  thoughts  are 
the  tools  of  our  intercourse  with  external  objects.  They 
are  attempts  at  externality  :  they  are  at  the  same  time 
the  medium  of  outgo  from  the  mind  to  the  outer  world, 
and  the  medium  through  which  that  outer  world  main- 
tains the  posture  of  externality  to  the  mind.  If  it  is  only 
the  subject  that  is  important,  an  end-in-itself,  and  also  a 
beginning  in  itself,  then  the  objects  of  thought  and  theory 
— together  with  thought  and  theory  themselves  —  are 
there  only  as  means,  factitious,  troublesome,  and  circuit- 
ous, through  which  the  subject  must  win  its  satisfaction. 
The  real  substance  of  that  subject  is  something  else  than 
intellect  —  a  natural  self  with  spontaneous  affections 
and  repulsions,  needs  and  desires,  beliefs  and  illusions, 
consistencies  and  contradictions.  That  which  in  human 
nature  is  fundamental,  intimate,  genuine,  private,  and 
wholly  owned,  is  feeling:  in  feeling  we  substantially 
exist. 

Then  there  is  the  biological  current,  which  easily 
abets  and  coalesces  with  the  psychological  trend  of 
thought.  There  is  something  in  the  logic  of  biology 
(though  certainly  it  is  no  part  of  biology  itself)  which 
has  helped  along  the  conviction  that  nothing  is  real  un- 
less it  is  aboriginal  and  germinal.  Biology  must  find 
the  explanation  of  the  characters  of  living  things  in  some 
interaction  between  these  things  and  their  environments : 
but  what  is  the  "  thing  "  which  takes  part  in  this  inter- 


THE   RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT  46 

action  ?  Naturally,  it  must  be  something  which  is  identi- 
cal throughout  all  the  transformations  of  the  organism, 
the  same  in  the  germ  and  in  the  mature  individual :  but 
that  which  is  identical  in  the  greater  and  in  the  less  must 
be  the  less,  one  might  fairly  suppose,  or  even  less  than  the 
less.  Hence  in  identifying  the  living  thing,  we  naturally 
look  toward  nucleus  and  germ,  behind  the  differentiated 
and  explicit. 

Now  if  it  is  true,  as  it  seems  to  be  true,  that  conscious 
life  is  a  shape  which  has  been  taken  on  by  some  more 
primitive  reality ;  and  that  intellect  is  a  more  or  less 
advanced  instrument  assumed  by  conscious  life  in  its  later 
stages  :  it  would  follow  that  this  conscious  life  itself  is 
something  else  than  intellect,  —  something  presumably 
of  the  nature  of  feeling. 

It  is  true  that  inferences  of  this  sort  are  hazardous : 
the  same  logic  would  lead  us  to  seek  the  explanation  of 
consciousness  in  something  less  than  consciousness.  Psy- 
chology is  always  attracted  by  biology,  in  the  search 
for  its  own  unit,  into  a  twilight  region  where  physi- 
cal and  psychical  incline  to  blend,  and  can  no  longer 
for  lack  of  light  be  distinguished.  Mistaking  its  own 
ground,  it  is  in  danger  of  lingering  and  groping  about 
in  a  sort  of  half -world,  where  the  mind  never  knows  how 
far  to  admit  itself  a  group  of  tropisms,  nor  the  brain  how 
far  to  allow  its  chemistry  to  dally  with  the  influences  of 
the  mind.  But  as  to  the  position  of  the  intellect  and  its 
ideas  there  is  no  confusion.  They  are,  as  it  were,  feelers, 
sparks,  signals,  thrown  out  by  the  deeper  reality,  and 
subject  forever  to  its  own  ultimate  ends.  Ideas  crop  out 
like  leaves;  if  they  are  cropped  off,  the  root  lives  on  — 
and  produces  more  leaves.  A  psychological  sociology 


46       KELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

accepts  this  instruction  from  biology,  and  forms  its  the- 
ories upon  these  principles.  What  is  the  substance  of 
the  family,  for  instance,  if  not  in  certain  heavy-loaded 
human  instincts  which  survive  many  a  dynasty  of  cus- 
toms and  custom-supporting  theories.  The  independent 
variable,  in  its  slow  march  through  the  ages,  lies  far 
deeper  than  the  idea.  The  real  is  the  permanent  and  the 
ancient,  as  well  as  the  germinal  and  creative.  But  only 
in  the  form  of  feeling  can  consciousness  accompany  the 
organism,  as  it  is  traced  back  to  its  simplest  forms  or  to 
its  beginnings. 

The  pragmatic  current,  the  third  of  these  scientific 
tendencies,  is  much  older  than  present-day  pragmatism, 
which  is  but "  a  new  name  for  some  old  ways  of  thinking." 
Its  conviction  is  that  nothing  is  real  which  does  not  do 
work.  And  in  proportion  as  it  appears  that  the  work- 
ing element  of  human  nature  is  value-consciousness, 
not  fact-consciousness,  pragmatic  tendencies  assign 
feeling  a  higher  degree  of  reality  than  idea.  This  is 
but  to  make  into  a  universal  principle  the  repeated 
observation  that  '  essences,'  when  we  get  close  to  them, 
are  energies  —  and  nothing  else.  If  we  look  for  mental 
substance,  what  do  we  find  except  the  energy-charge  of 
action,  which  is  feeling.  Ideas  can  apparently  float  idle 
in  the  mind ;  facts  and  truths  can  deserve  the  epithet 
*  mere ' ;  and  if  they  do  not  deserve  it,  if  they  have  any 
grit,  it  is  no  inherent  quality  of  their  own,  but  added  by 
some  gift  from  our  own  will.  Especially  are  our  ideas 
about  metaphysical  things  liable  to  become  thus  'mere' 
and  dead.  All  available  information  about  heaven  and 
hell,  and  more,  one  may  receive  unmoved.  In  a  certain 


THE   RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT  47 

military  establishment,  the  pious  are  called  "  hell  dodgers," 
implying  that  a  soldier  should  be  ready  to  take  hell  like 
a  man.  If  any  stirring  of  concern  or  plan  of  action 
comes  out  of  the  idea,  that  is  an  additional  fact,  not 
bound  to  it  by  any  definition ;  and  religion  lies  in  the 
stirring,  not  in  the  view.  Enlightened  religion  has  per- 
ceived this  from  afar,  and  has  called  on  men  not  to 
acknowledge  certain  truths,  but  to  love  certain  realities. 
In  this  judgment  biology  strengthens  the  pragmatic 
tendency,  just  as  it  abets  the  psychological  tendency. 
For  an  idea  is  (biologically)  a  product  of  friction  and 
hesitation  in  conduct :  a  token  of  failure  in  spontaneous 
reaction.  Creatures  become  conceptually  conscious,  it 
appears,  in  proportion  as  they  have  need  to  extract  an 
identical  value  from  an  ambiguous  or  non-committal 
environment.  Hence,  an  idea  stands  for  a  pause 
between  perception  and  action.  It  is  an  eddy  into 
which  the  mind  enters,  a  product  of  doubt  and  a  means 
of  parley.  But  religious  impulse  has  no  need  thus  to 
learn  its  line  of  outflow.  It  has  no  mission  to  special 
plans  of  action,  but  rather  a  set  and  spirit  to  infuse  into 
the  whole  active  being.  Religion  is  one  with  its  appli- 
cation ;  it  exists  applied.  Hence,  it  does  not  pause  to 
hang  up  in  the  exhibit  room  of  our  ideas  the  program  or 
scheme  of  its  meaning,  as  if  it  were  something  to  be 
deliberated — definite,  defensible,  and  so  debatable.  It 
is  more  like  the  breath  of  life,  its  existence  its  own 
defense.  Such  immediacy  and  centrality  belong  only  to 
feeling. 

All  of  these  currents  so  far  described  are  founded 
upon  a  common  insight,  nam'ely :  that  ideas  have  at  all 


48       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

points  to  be  tested  by  a  higher  authority.  This  insight 
is  itself  the  burden  of  yet  another  current  of  thought, 
much  older  and  broader  than  the  others,  which  it  sustains 
and  makes  possible  :  it  is  the  critical  current,  coexten- 
sive almost  with  modern  times.  To  John  Locke  we  owe 
our  prompt  confidence  that  it  is  possible  to  set  up  limits 
and  standards  for  thought ;  it  was  he  who  first  deliber- 
ately made  bold  to  examine  our  ideas  from  the  outside 
—  in  the  attitude  of  a  physician  ;  it  is  "  Dr."  Locke  who 
first  accomplishes  an  idea  of  an  idea  —  a  more  or  less 
physical  idea  of  an  idea  —  and  sets  the  fashion  of  as- 
signing reasonable  limits  to  the  use  of  reason,  in  view 
of  the  humble  origin  and  restricted  function  of  our  ideas. 
That  we  may  and  must  look  thus  physicianly  upon  our 
ideas  from  the  outside  is  no  longer  an  open  question ; 
it  is  only  to  be  questioned  what  that  greater  thing  is 
which  surrounds  and  subordinates  the  ideas  to  itself. 
That  higher  authority,  the  three  currents  above  considered 
have  agreed  to  find  in  the  region  of  feeling.  And  so  far 
at  least  we  must  follow  them  :  in  every  human  interest 
the  rationale,  the  exposition,  is  weaker  than  the  vital 
meaning  of  the  thing  as  retained  in  feeling  or  instinct. 
And  all  observations  of  this  sort  are  more  conspicuously 
true  of  religion  than  of  anything  else,  because  in  reli- 
gion the  status  of  ideas  is  less  certain  than  elsewhere, 
and  the  tap  root  of  human  instinct  more  deeply  involved. 

It  seems  to  me  a  weighty  consensus, — this  group  of 
tendencies  which  we  have  thus  hastily  reviewed.  It  is, 
of  course,  no  new  discovery  that  religion  is  an  affair  of 
the  heart  rather  than  of  the  head.  Among  the  axioms 
of  that  instinctive  human  knowledge  about  religion  is 


THE  RETIREMENT   OF  THE  INTELLECT  49 

this  one:  that  religion  must  be  accessible  to  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men,  to  the  unlearned  as  well  as  to  the 
learned.  If  scripture  and  all  appearances  do  not  deceive, 
babes  have  even  a  certain  advantage  in  this  matter  over 
the  wise  and  prudent ;  which  could  hardly  be  the  case 
if  religion  depends  upon  the  results  of  thinking.  Reli- 
gion does  not  as  a  rule  show  itself  strongest  in  the  most 
thoughtful;  nor  can  the  reasoner  develop  it  in  himself 
by  his  reasoning.  All  these  are  observations  of  long 
standing  in  the  history  of  the  spirit.  What  distinguishes 
our  present  age  is  that  this  old  truth  now  appears  as  a 
philosophical  conclusion,  as  a  result  hard-won  and  inde- 
pendently won.  Our  sketch  of  some  of  the  factors  in  this 
conclusion,  imperfect  as  it  is,  may  make  more  definite  to 
us  the  meaning  of  the  claim  that  feeling  is  the  essence 
of  religion.  A  general  conception  or  picture  of  religion 
emerges,  something  as  follows  : 

Religion  is  to  be  understood  as  a  product  and  mani- 
festo of  human  desire ;  and  that  of  no  secondary  and 
acquired  desire,  such  as  curiosity,  but  of  deep-going 
desire,  deep  as  the  ,will-to-live  itself.  Its  non-rational 
character  may  be  seen  in  the  fact  that  in  satisfying  the 
religious  craving,  an  individual  serves  the  race  more  than 
he  serves  himself:  as  in  the  desires  of  sex  and  hunger, 
nature  uses  a  well-centered  impulse  to  produce  a  far- 
reaching  effect.  The  religious  motives  of  men  have  con- 
tained the  secret  of  political  loyalty  as  of  other  costly, 
death-involving  loyalties.  If  we  should  venture  to  name 
this  deep-set  desire  which  we  call  religious  it  might  be 
represented  as  an  ultimate  demand  for  conscious  self- 
preservation  : 1  it  is  man's  leap,  as  individual  and  as  spe- 

1  Lippert  unites  many  strands  of  theory  in  deriving  religion  from  the 
fundamental  need  of  "  Lebensfiirsory*  "  Kulturgeschichte,  chapter  I. 


60       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

cies,  for  eternal  life  in  some  form,  in  presence  of  an 
awakened  fear  of  fate.  Religion  is  a  reaction  to  "  our 
finite  situation,"  a  natural  reflex  of  small  and  highly 
aspiring  beings  in  a  huge  —  perhaps  infinite  —  arena. 
This  reaction  seems  to  be,  at  its  heart,  as  instinctive  as 
a  start  or  a  shudder.  It  is  (in  its  first  shock)  an  imme- 
diate and  penetrating,  even  appalling,  recognition  of 
what  and  where  I  am  in  the  universe ;  it  may  issue  in 
some  sense  of  footing,  and  of  the  direction  in  which 
safety  lies  :  in  any  case  it  is,  in  itself,  a  great  emotional 
response  to  the  felt  perils  and  glories  of  the  weird  situa- 
tion. The  unlighted  vagueness  of  outline  in  this  vast 
setting,  the  necessity  of  moving  by  the  most  elemental 
of  instincts  rather  than  by  vision,  the  almost  animal 
panics  and  animal  assurances  of  the  adventure  (as  we 
see  them  in  religious  history),  make  the  language  of 
reason  inept  —  even  false.  If  we  resist  the  impulse  to 
refer  the  whole  experience  to  a  special  faculty,  different 
alike  from  thought,  from  feeling,  and  from  will,  in  short 
to  a  "  supernatural  sense,"  we  must  certainly  choose  the 
realm  of  feeling  as  fittest  to  contain  so  unique  and  inti- 
mate a  transaction.  The  history  of  religious  agony  and 
despair,  of  hope,  attainment,  exultation,  the  whole  gamut 
of  the  intense  inner  drama,  shows  beyond  doubt  the 
locus  and  the  eternal  spring  of  the  vitality  of  religion. 

Such  feeling  is  peculiarly  able  to  retain  the  position 
which  religion  must  hold  in  our  living,  —  the  position 
which  reason  is  always  exposed  to  losing.  There  is  some- 
thing unspoiled  and  original  about  human  feeling:  it 
lies  beyond  the  reach  of  dispute,  refutation,  and  change. 
Eeligious  feeling  is  the  adequate  counterpart  of  those 
metaphysical  first  principles  upon  which  so  much  used 


THE   RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT  51 

to  be  hung,  in  everything  that  made  those  principles 
attractive.  It  has  the  same  primordial  and  original  char- 
acter, the  same  cosmic  scope  and  dignity;  and  it  has  in 
addition  what  these  principles  had  not,  —  the  energetic 
property  which  fits  it  not  alone  to  guide  but  also  to 
instigate  and  to  sustain  what  it  has  produced.  Men  have 
always  been  more  or  less  clear  that  the  essence  of  reli- 
gion cannot  be  far  from  the  brewing-place  of  action,  and 
that  the  most  sensitive  test  of  genuine  religion  is  in 
its  ethical  consequences.  Prophets  have  always  been 
obliged  to  recall  idle  mankind  —  keen  to  evade  a  hard 
requirement — from  the  extraneous  to  the  central  ele- 
ments in  their  religion.  Of  such  extraneous  elements, 
rite  and  ceremony  were  prominent  in  the  earlier  ages  of 
prophetic  rebuke ;  but  in  these  latter  days  it  is  the 
seduction  of  the  religious  idea,  with  the  same  illusory 
promise  of  security  formerly  offered  by  the  rite,  that  is 
the  chief  antithesis  to  genuine  religion.  Practical  and 
responsible  feeling  bids  fair  to  give  a  clear  and  suf- 
ficient answer  to  the  various  demands  which  are  made 
upon  religion.  But  perhaps  one  point  should  be  further 
dwelt  upon. 

For  surely  he  is  bold  who  asserts  that  religion,  which 
we  may  grant  to  arise  out  of  feeling,  has  its  satisfaction 
in  feeling  also?  In  a  former  chapter  we  defined  religion, 
not  by  its  origin,  but  by  its  successful  completion, — as 
a  form  of  attainment:  and  can  it  be  said  that  feeling 
satisfies  feeling?  It  has  been  assumed  from  ancient 
times  that  these  cosmic  hopes  and  fears  contain  within 
themselves  as  necessary  ingredients  certain  theoretical 
questions,  which  questions  can  only  be  satisfied  with 


LIBRARY 

/'.  T  I  ON  A  I    I!  0 


52       RELIGIOUS   FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

theoretical  answers.  It  was  supposed  that  men  wanted 
to  know  whether  there  be,  in  very  fact,  a  god;  and 
whether,  in  historic  literalness,  men's  souls  endure  after 
the  death  of  the  body.  These  and  other  questions  are 
categorical  enough,  it  might  seem ;  and  the  plain-speak- 
ing man  will  not  be  put  off  with  other  than  categorical 
answers. 

But  we  are  pointedly  reminded  by  advocates  of  the 
religion  of  feeling  that  if  we  have  indeed  such  wishes  as 
these  for  express  knowledge,  these  wishes  have  never 
been  fulfilled  :  and  the  various  good  reasons  for  suppos- 
ing such  questions  unanswerable  are  so  many  good  rea- 
sons for  doubting  whether  we  have  any  such  theoretical 
needs  and  wishes.  These  alleged  wishes  for  knowledge 
have  in  all  times  been  quieted  by  answers  that  can  be 
easily  shown  empty ;  which  would  imply  that  the  wish 
itself  is  something  other  than  it  takes  itself  to  be,  is  only 
one  more  case  of  a  common  thing  in  human  nature — 
a  misunderstanding  of  our  own  wants. 

For  example :  we  have  at  times  set  great  store  on  the 
doctrine  that  God  exists  —  letting  pass  as  relatively 
unimportant  the  further  question  about  the  nature  of 
God:  but  clearly  unless  we  have  some  tangible  inkling 
as  to  what  God  is  like,  it  profits  us  little  to  know  that 
he  is.  May  it  not  be  that  the  real  meaning  of  that 
desire  to  be  assured  of  a  God  is  absorbed  in  settling  our 
own  good-will  toward  our  own  destiny,  satisfying  our- 
selves that  in  acting  morally  we  are  not  playing  the  fool  ? 
Similar  things  have  to  be  said  of  the  interest  in  a  future 
life,  often  so  zealously  insisted  on  apart  from  any  enquiry 
into  the  possible  nature  and  endurableness  of  a  permanent 
existence.  Perhaps  into  these  questions  themselves  we 


All  Oil 


THE  RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT  63 

have  imported  more  of  the  earth,  with  its  own  person- 
alities and  its  own  time-order  than  we  could  support. 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  greed  of  the  spirit  —  so 
we  are  told  by  those  who  find  religion  in  feeling  — 
which  not  only  claims  more  than  it  can  use,  but  heaps 
up  for  itself  trouble  by  overreaching  its  powers.  We 
learn  in  time  to  be  content  with  the  "  revelation  "  we 
have;  and  to  read  that  revelation  more  modestly  than 
we  used,  accepting  the  fact  that  in  all  questions  of 
supernatural  physics  and  psychology  the  same  obscurity 
is  the  lot  of  man  in  all  ages.  For  revelation,  as  we  come 
to  see,  is  reticent,  and  slow  to  clarify  in  these  matters. 
If  there  are  any  coherent  messages  to  be  read,  we  must 
gaze  long  into  the  glass  to  make  them  out.  We  are  more 
diffident  about  lump-communications  from  behind  the 
veil  than  our  forefathers  were.  To  say  that  our  satisfac- 
tion comes  in  the  form  of  feeling  rather  than  in  that  of 
categorical  propositions  seems  more  simply  conformable 
to  the  facts.  It  is  in  harmony  also  with  what  many  men 
of  exalted  piety  have  reported  of  their  own  attainments  : 
namely,  that  the  contents  of  religious  insight  are  inde- 
scribable ;  that  as  we  specify  them,  we  falsify  them ;  that 
feeling  alone  is  right.  According  to  these  persons,  as 
religion  becomes  more  true  and  self-knowing,  it  becomes 
more  silent;  as  it  becomes  perfect,  it  becomes  dumb. 
It  is  our  practical  and  responsible  feeling  which  alone 
can  give  body  and  substance  to  that  which  in  terms  of 
idea  is  nothing. 

Let  us  not  disguise  the  fact  that  only  a  much  altered 
conception  of  revelation  can  comport  with  this  religion 
of  feeling,  a  conception  somewhat  as  follows :  If  it 
may  be  said  that  God  in  religious  attainment  touches 


64       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

and  satisfies  the  spirit,  his  dealings  are  not  overt  and 
visional,  nor  verbally  expressible  without  transformation 
and  risk  of  error.  In  admitting  the  soul  to  new  certain- 
ties, revelation  leads  by  the  path  of  premonition,  not  by 
that  of  inserted  information.  The  transaction  of  God 
with  the  soul  (if  there  be  any  such  transaction)  is  not  in 
the  form  of  conversation,  in  which  could  be  imparted 
(though  only  by  whisper)  statements,  and  inside  advice, 
direction  to  the  way  of  life,  and  true  descriptions  of 
destiny  to  come.  No :  any  such  dealings  must  occur 
in  the  unlighted  chambers  of  consciousness,  whose  only 
report  to  the  vocal  self  is  in  the  raw-material  of  feeling. 
And  when  the  attempt  is  made  to  interpret  the  impres- 
sion thus  received,  it  must  first  be  projected  from  us, 
and  read  as  at  the  remote  end  of  an  unsteady  beam. 
We  cannot  but  find  in  this  projection  a  flickering, 
uncertain  record,  corrupt  with  imagery  taken  from  the 
mind's  external  store,  or  tricked  out  in  dress  accepted 
from  an  older  custom  and  tradition.  If  such  is,  and  has 
been,  the  nature  of  revelation,  we  may  understand  the 
sources  of  the  inveterate  variety  and  dissonance  of 
religious  ideas.  We  see  that  it  is  well  when  men  are 
beaten  back  from  the  idea,  as  from  a  vain  quest,  to 
return  to  the  genuine  import  of  revelation  in  terms  of 
feeling  with  its  definite  bearing  upon  action. 

With  this  understanding  of  revelation,  it  may  reason- 
ably be  held  that  religion,  which  has  its  origin  in  feeling 
(of  one  kind),  has  in  feeling  (of  another  kind)  its 
satisfaction  also. 

Thus,  I  have  stated  —  in  a  very  summary  fashion,  but 
I  hope  with  rough  justice — the  more  general  grounds 


THE  RETIREMENT  OF  THE  INTELLECT  55 

for  the  retirement  of  the  intellect  in  religion.  I  am  not 
wholly  in  accord  with  the  conclusion  to  which  these 
tendencies  have  led;  I  have  been  the  more  desirous  of 
presenting  them  in  their  cumulative  force. 


CHAPTER  V 

RELIGION'S   DILEMMA  IN   RESPECT  TO  THEORY 

CONSIDERATIONS  of  the  sort  we  have  reviewed 
^<-J  flock  to  the  support  of  him  who  asserts  that  religion 
is  a  way  of  feeling.  The  intangible  nature  of  religious 
objects;  the  obscurity  of  revelation  ;  the  lack  of  propor- 
tion between  religious  power  and  religious  theory ;  the 
direct  and  personal  conditions  of  religious  growth ;  the 
identity  of  religions  beneath  diversity  of  ideas;  and 
finally,  the  large  consensus  of  scientific  judgment  in 
subordinating  thought  to  some  more  ultimate  reality 
as  its  authority.  If  anything  could  add  to  the  weight 
of  all  this,  it  might  be  an  immediate  consciousness  of 
what  we  mean  by  religion  in  ourselves ;  hardly  a  com- 
pendium of  theology,  but  rather  a  governing  disposition 
of  some  sort,  which  may  do  its  work  as  a  state  of  feeling 
whether  or  not  we  are  fluent  with  the  theory  that  could 
justify  it. 

But  I  doubt  if  we  find  substance  enough  in  a  religion 
of  feeling.  It  has  advantages  of  a  positive  sort ;  it  makes 
religion  a  matter  of  experience,  present  and  concrete. 
But  it  also  has  advantages  of  a  negative  sort  which  are 
highly  questionable;  it  solves  too  many  problems  by 
avoiding  them  ;  it  escapes  too  completely  the  labor  and 
hazard  of  thinking.  There  seems  to  be  some  natural 
necessity  whereby  religion  must  try  to  put  itself  into 
terms  of  thought  and  to  put  its  thought  foremost.  Reli- 


RELIGION'S   DILEMMA  IN   RESPECT  TO   THEORY     57 

gion  seems  to  begin  in  feeling;  and  it  seems  everywhere 
to  surrender  by  an  inner  requirement  the  advantage  of 
this  simple  and  strong  position,  to  risk  itself  in  the 
field  of  ideas  with  all  its  instability  and  wreckage.  If 
only  as  students  of  history  we  must  come  to  terms  with 
this  conspicuous  fact:  that  religion  has  never  as  yet  been 
able  to  take  itself  as  a  matter  of  feeling. 

Especially  in  its  prophets  and  originators  has  the  reli- 
gious consciousness  been  stubbornly  objective:  it  has  con- 
cerned itself  with  metaphysical  objects,  with  God  and 
the  other  world  and  the  laws  thereof,  with  our  remot- 
est and  most  external  objects:  and  it  has  intended  to 
propagate  itself  by  fixing  the  eye  of  the  mind  on  these 
things,  not  on  its  own  inner  states.  Doubtless  the 
prophet  is  mistaken  if  he  thinks  that  he  moves  men  only 
by  the  truth  he  offers  them :  it  may  be  that  the  actual 
forces  of  religious  propagation  are  much  nearer  his  own 
personality  than  he  imagines,  much  nearer,  certainly, 
than  these  remote  objects.  Yes;  but  would  not  the 
prophet  lose  at  once  in  power  if  he  should  deliberately 
abandon  his  objects  and  begin  to  exploit  his  own  per- 
sonality ?  Is  it  not  true  that  the  prophet  has  personal 
power,  in  part  at  least,  because  personal  power  is  not 
his  direct  concern  ?  The  strength  of  religion  in  the 
world  (so  we  thought  in  an  earlier  chapter)  depends  upon 
the  fact  that  the  religious  man  is  free  from  himself. 
And  are  we  to  believe  that  the  work  of  religion  in  the 
world  depends  on  a  self-deception,  a  permanent  dis- 
crepancy between  what  such  men  suppose  themselves  to 
be  doing,  and  what  in  fact  they  are  doing? 

I  cannot  believe  that  this  is  the  case.  The  thread  of 
history  is,  to  some  extent,  a  thread  continuous  within 


58       RELIGION  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

the  intentions  of  the  actors  in  history.  However  rich  we 
may  become  in  knowledge  of  the  deeper  causes  of  his- 
torical results,  we  forgo  all  understanding  of  history  if 
we  forget  this  inner  continuity,  —  i.e.,  the  conscious 
intentions  of  the  participants  in  history-making  and  their 
consciously  known  successes.  And  more  than  any  other 
element  of  history,  religion  demands  to  be  understood 
from  the  inside.  Granted  that  the  more  exalted  the 
prophet,  the  more  his  work  will  be  mixed  with  passion  and 
the  more  his  success  will  be  due  to  his  intensity  of  feeling: 
yet  just  because  of  this  passion,  we  shall  be  less  at 
liberty  rather  than  more  at  liberty  to  translate  his  fervid 
assertions  about  God,  man,  and  destiny  into  terms  of 
feeling.  We  shall  be  impelled,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  to 
attach  importance  to  his  metaphysics,  if  only  because 
he  himself  attaches  primary  importance  thereto. 

I  will  go  so  far  as  to  say  this :  That  he  who  sees  in 
the  output  of  theory  and  doctrine  in  religion  only  a 
natural  blunder,  the  prophet's  misunderstanding  of  his 
own  psychology,  does  quite  as  completely  renounce  all 
insight  into  history  as  if  he  held  to  that  older  explana- 
tion of  religion  by  intentional  priestly  deception  and 
priestly  craft.  Unless  the  idea  in  religion  has  some 
necessary  and  central  function,  we  are  wholly  without 
explanation  for  this  lavish  and  persistent  yield  of 
"revealed  truth."  And  still  more  perverse  and  inex- 
plicable must  seem  the  universal  insistence  on  these 
intellectual  by-products  ;  the  persecution  and  slaughter 
uttered  in  maintaining  them.  Slaughter  and  intoler- 
ance are  aberrations,  sometimes ;  but  they  are  aberra- 
tions founded  at  least  on  convictions.  They  may 
belong  to  the  Dark  Ages,  but  they  do  not  belong  to 


RELIGION'S  DILEMMA  IN   RESPECT  TO  THEORY     69 

the  Dead  Ages,  of  religion.  Some  right  sense  there 
must  be  beneath  all  this  over-violent  emphasis  on  doc- 
trine. There  is  no  possible  psychology  of  history 
which  can  escape  the  judgment  that  these  intellectual 
ingredients  of  religion  are  in  some  way  vital. 

And  when  we  say  that  it  is  a  declining  religion  which 
prizes  the  subtleties  of  theology,  we  must  make  a  dis- 
tinction between  one  kind  of  thinking  and  another. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  congestion  of  cleverness 
consistent  with  a  great  dearth  of  profound  thought. 
Clever  and  intricate  theology  does  usually  mean  trivial 
religion ;  but  mighty  religion  and  mighty  strokes  of 
speculation  have  always  gone  together.  Something  like 
a  religious  impulse  is  needed  to  sustain  the  flight  of  pow- 
erful and  far-reaching  thought :  and  presumably  the 
converse  is  also  true,  that  a  religious  impulse  must 
exhibit  its  force  in  some  fundamental  cognitive  achieve- 
ment, some  Sultan's  turret  caught  in  a  noose  of  light, 
—  even  though  this  achievement  may  have  little  in  com- 
mon with  the  noisier  conquests  made  by  the  logical 
weapons  of  the  forum.  Deficit  of  mind  must  always,  I 
venture  to  think,  be  a  weakness  in  religion,  and  must 
rob  that  religion  at  last  of  all  mordant  power.  A  great 
religion  will  produce,  and  demand  of  its  adherents  that 
they  reproduce,  some  great  idea  or  system  of  ideas. 
Such,  I  say,  is  the  evident  purport  of  history. 

The  intellectual  elements  of  religion  must  be  vital ; 
yet  the  embarrassments  which  religion  suffers  on  account 
of  them  have  hardly  been  overstated.  Is  it  not  probable 
that  in  this  matter  of  theory  religion  is  in  a  genuine 
predicament,  unable  to  maintain  its  ideas  in  face  of  scien- 


60      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

tific  criticism,  yet  unable  to  dispense  with  them?  Reli- 
gion seems  to  labor  under  a  double  necessity  :  the  neces- 
sity of  making  much  use  of  thought,  and  the  necessity 
of  discounting  all  thought.  Kant's  theory  regarding 
our  knowledge  of  God,  immortality,  and  other  reli- 
gious objects,  does  fairly  describe  our  apparent  situation. 
Our  human  mind,  thought  Kant,  is  forever  obliged  to 
attempt  the  impossible  in  these  matters :  it  must  attempt 
to  express  its  religion  in  theoretical  terms,  and  it  must 
deny  the  resulting  ideas  all  scientific  validity.  Human- 
)  ity  must  give  conceptual  form  to  its  religious  ideals  and 
governing  principles,  because  these  must  hold  their  own 
with  all  other  experience  and  theory :  but  since  our  only 
resources  for  framing  ideas  are  such  as  pertain  to  this 
world  of  natural  experience,  they  can  never  truly  repre- 
vsent  to  us  any  object  which  is  beyond  such  experience. 
Religious  speculation  is  inevitable  ;  yet  it  always  falsi- 
fies the  religious  object,  turns  it  into  something  human- 
istic and  material,  something  which  interferes  with  the 
clear  sweep  of  scientific  thought  and  at  the  same  time 
brings  the  religious  object  into  the  world  with  which 
it  should  stand  in  contrast.  We  are  thus  caught  in  what 
Kant  calls  the  "  dialectical  illusion  "  ;  and  religion  is  un- 
able to  evade  either  of  the  two  opposing  requirements. 
If  there  is  any  such  dilemma  as  this  in  the  nature  of 
the  case,  religious  history  will  show  it :  for  every  such 
difficulty  within  the  mind  is  bound  to  appear  in  history 
as  a  division  between  parties.  Now  just  such  a  division 
seems  to  break  out  in  mediaeval  Europe  when  scholastics 
and  mystics  fall  apart.  On  one  side,  the  scholastics  hold 
to  the  theoretical  validity  of  religious  doctrines.  On  the 
other  side,  the  mystics  are  more  impressed  by  the  hope- 


RELIGION'S  DILEMMA  IN  RESPECT  TO  THEORY     61 

less  defects  of  the  idea  in  religion  and  call  for  its  renuncia- 
tion. And  each  of  these  two  parties  has  a  characteris- 
tic way  of  recognizing  the  grain  of  truth  in  the  position 
of  the  other.  The  scholastics  are  unable  to  ignore  the 
profound  difficulties  in  religious  truth;  they  incline 
(with  their  genius  for  slippery  distinctions)  to  invent 
a  third  status  between  truth  and  falsehood  wherein  cer- 
tain parts  of  religious  dogma  must  consent  to  dwell. 
Religious  truth  has  standards  of  its  own,  somewhat  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  other  truth :  a  statement  which  is 
scientifically  false  (as  a  story  of  creation  or  of  virgin 
birth)  may  yet  be  religiously  true  and  binding.  The 
mystics,  for  their  part,  are  equally  unable  to  ignore  the 
necessity  for  using  ideas,  even  while  the  ideas  are  de- 
fective :  but  as  an  upright  and  downright  lot,  they  are 
unable  to  reckon  with  shades  in  the  status  of  truth. 
They  therefore  take  refuge  in  paradox,  which  is  but 
another  way  of  confessing  the  same  dilemma.  God  is 
real,  they  assert,  yet  he  is  nothing,  infinite  emptiness ; 
he  is  at  once  all-being  and  no-being.  The  other  world 
is  real  and  objective ;  yet  at  the  same  time  it  is  within 
myself  —  I  myself  am  heaven  and  hell.1  The  predicament 
in  question  is  thus  fairly  attested  in  religious  history : 
the  scholastic  and  the  mystic  are  facing  a  genuine 

1  As  in  the  lines  of  Silesius  : 

Gott  ist  ein  lauter  Nichts,  ihn  rtihrt  kein  Nun  noch  Hier. 

Je  mehr  du  nach  ihn  greifst  —  je  mehr  entwind  er  dir. 

(God  is  a  perfect  Naught ;  no  Now  nor  Here  attain  him. 

The  more  thou  striv'st  to  seize,  the  more  thou  fail'st  to  gain  him.) 

Cherubinischer  Wandersmann,  I.  25. 

Ich  selbst  bin  Ewigkeit,  wann  ich  die  Zeit  verlasse, 
Und  mich  in  Gott  und  Gott  in  mich  zusammenfasse. 
(I  am  Eternity  when  I  have  Time  forsaken, 
And  self  comprised  in  God,  and  God  in  self  have  taken.) 

Same,  1. 13. 


62       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

dilemma.  And  a  problem  set  thus  deep  in  religious 
consciousness  cannot  be  met,  as  in  the  religion  of  feel- 
ing, by  a  simple  retreat  from  the  cause  of  the  trouble, 
the  necessity  of  the  idea. 

We  must  find  a  solution  which  will  give  the  idea  in 
religion  positive  and  unambiguous  standing.  The  sug- 
gestions of  the  mystic  and  of  the  scholastic  are  all  val- 
uable, but  so  far  as  we  have  noticed  them  they  still  leave 
us  groping.  Is  there  perhaps  some  hope  in  a  point  of 
view  which  is  both  older  and  newer  than  this  mediaeval 
discussion  and  which  pervades  it  all :  namely,  in  holding 
to  the  simple  validity  of  religious  knowledge  while  mak- 
ing a  distinction  among  our  faculties  of  knowledge  ? 
The  ancient  distinction  was  made  between  reason  and 
faith.  In  Kantian  and  post-Kantian  times,  this  same 
distinction  often  takes  the  form  of  a  contrast  between 
intellect  and  insight,  thought  and  intuition,  Verstand 
and  Vernunft.  May  it  be,  perhaps,  that  religious  truth 
is  to  be  known  by  faith  or  Vernunft,  a  higher  sort  of 
intelligence  than  common  understanding? 

To  my  mind,  all  such  distinctions  as  these  leave  us 
precisely  as  we  are  left  by  the  scholastics  with  their  two- 
fold truth  and  the  mystics  with  their  paradoxes.  A  dis- 
tinction in  the  faculties  of  knowledge  only  substitutes 
one  problem  for  another.  We  cannot  permanently  re- 
lieve a  split  in  our  world  of  idea  by  making  a  split  in 
the  soul  to  account  for  it.  All  of  these  devices  are  but 
various  ways  of  stating  and  perpetuating  the  problem  ; 
and  though  this  is  itself  no  small  service,  it  is  but  a 
tentative  one. 

The  best  hope  lies  in  a  different  direction :  namely, 


RELIGION'S   DILEMMA  IN  RESPECT  TO  THEORY     63 

in  attacking  the  division  already  set  up  between  feeling 
and  idea.  The  advocates  of  the  religion  of  feeling  are 
not  mistaken  in  referring  our  various  religious  ideas  to 
a  higher  authority,  which  they  call  feeling  :  the  mistake 
is,  as  I  think,  in  not  observing  that  the  higher  authority 
is  itself  still  idea.  Idea  can  only  be  judged  and  cor- 
rected by  idea ;  but  these  most  authoritative  ideas  are 
so  much  more  intimately  related  to  experience  and  to 
feeling  than  other  ideas  as  to  justify  nearly  all  that  the 
religion  of  feeling  asserts.  It  seems  probable  that  in 
religion  idea  and  feeling  are  inseparable ;  and  that  what- 
ever valid  ideas  religion  may  have  are  to  be  found  in 
that  region  of  human  nature  where  the  cleavage  between 
idea  and  feeling,  never  more  than  a  tendency  to  diverge, 
no  longer  exists. 

The  religion  of  feeling  depends  on  an  artificial  con- 
ception of  this  cleavage.  It  depends  in  fact  on  three 
assumptions  (to  summarize  its  various  motives  some- 
what violently) :  first,  that  feeling  may  be  happily  inde- 
pendent of  theory  ;  second,  that  theory  may  be  drearily 
independent  of  feeling ;  and  third,  that  valid  theory  in 
religion  is  not  obtainable.  A  study  of  the  inner  nature 
of  those  states  of  mind  which  we  call  feeling  and  idea 
should  rectify  these  assumptions,  and  indicate  the  direc- 
tion in  which  we  may  look  for  valid  religious  knowledge. 
It  should  leave  us  not  so  much  with  a  refutation  as  with 
a  better  interpretation  of  those  motives  which  have  led 
to  the  retirement  of  the  intellect.  This  study  we  shall 
now  undertake,  beginning  with  the  first  of  the  three 
assumptions  mentioned,  and  then  (in  chapters  vii  to  xi) 
dealing  with  the  third  and  the  second  assumptions  in 
the  order  named. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  DESTINY   OF  FEELING 

IF  these  ensuing  enquiries  into  human  nature  are 
often  occupied  with  feeling  and  idea  as  if  for  their 
own  sakes,  while  the  special  interests  of  religion  fall 
momentarily  into  the  background,  it  is  because  we  are 
obliged  here  to  some  extent  to  work  out  our  own  way 
in  independence  of  the  usual  paths  of  psychological 
theory.  I  must  bespeak  the  patience  of  the  reader  to 
that  end. 

Of  this  present  chapter,  the  thesis  is  a  simple  one, 
namely  this  :  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  feeling  apart 
from  idea ;  that  idea  is  an  integral  part  of  all  feeling ;  and 
that  it  is  the  whole  meaning  and  destiny  of  feeling  to 
terminate  in  knowledge  of  an  object.  If  these  things  are 
true,  they  will  help  us  to  understand  why  a  religion  of 
feeling  always  and  rightly  tends  to  transform  itself  into 
a  religion  of  idea. 

We  have  already  noticed  how  closely  feeling  is  con- 
nected with  action.  This  is  one  of  the  great  advantages 
of  interpreting  religion  in  terms  of  feeling.  Some  of  our 
feelings  are  indeed  less  obviously  active  than  others. 
The  feelings  of  absolute  dependence,  of  awe,  and  of 
reverence,  which  Schleiermacher  regarded  as  the  essence 
of  all  religion,  are  of  a  relatively  quiescent  and  contem- 
plative sort.  Yet  these  feelings  also  (though  they  are 


THE   DESTINY  OF  FEELING  66 

not  the  whole  of  religious  feeling)  do  powerfully  regu- 
late action,  even  if  they  do  not  seem  at  once  to  excite 
action.  In  all  feeling,  if  we  look  closely,  we  shall  find 
activity  and  the  guidance  of  action. 

But  to  say  that  feeling  is  the  immediate  cause  of  ac- 
tivity is  still  to  put  it  too  far  away  from  action.  In  feel- 
ing, action  is  already  begun :  feeling  is  itself  activity. 
Feeling  is  always  in  transformation  —  as  if  it  had  need 
to  escape  from  itself.  Its  very  existence  seems  to  con- 
sist in  a  kind  of  instability  in  consciousness,  a  nascency 
and  unfinishedness  of  mind  which  requires  continuous 
change.  Emotion  is  a  name  usually  reserved  for  certain 
of  our  more  complex  feelings ;  but  speaking  literally, 
all  feeling  is  e-motion,  a  flight  from  what  is  to  some- 
thing beyond.  And  thus  all  feelings,  I  venture  to  say, 
are  forms  of  desire  —  not  forgetting  those  feelings  which 
seem  to  terminate  desire,  as  joy,  triumph,  and  relief  — 
and  all  have  at  their  center  a  sting  of  restlessness. 

It  follows  that  that  which  can  satisfy  feeling  is  some- 
thing which  will  destroy  it  as  feeling.  As  much  feeling  as 
is  present  at  any  time  —  just  so  much  unrest  and  pushing 
onward  elsewhere  for  satisfaction.  In  the  movement  of 
life  feeling  is  always  present,  for  the  destruction  of  one 
f eeling  is  as  a  rule  the  inception  of  another  :  one  feeling 
debouches  in  another,  or  the  appeasement  of  one  hunger 
sets  in  motion  the  springs  of  another.  Thus  emotion 
maintains  a  perpetual  circle  while  life  lasts.  But  it  re- 
mains true  that  to  satisfy  any  given  feeling  is  to  bring 
that  feeling  to  an  end.  And  if  the  attainment  which 
religion  offers  is  indeed  a  satisfaction  of  all  desire,  and 
not  of  some  fragment  of  our  nature,  it  must  intend  a 
living  escape  from  this  perpetual  circle  :  we  should 


66      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

expect  to  find  in  religion  the  destruction  of  all  feeling 
as  such. 

What  is  that  other-than-feeling  in  which  feeling  may 
end?  I  answer,  consciousness  of  an  object.  Feeling 
is  instability  of  an  entire  conscious  self  :  and  that  which 
will  restore  the  stability  of  this  self  lies  not  within  its 
own  border  but  beyond  it.  Feeling  is  outward-pushing, 
as  idea  is  outward-reporting :  and  no  feeling  is  so  blind 
as  to  have  no  idea  of  its  own  object.  As  a  feeling 
possesses  the  mind,  there  also  possesses  the  mind  as  an 
integral  part  of  that  feeling,  some  idea  of  the  kind  of 
thing  which  will  bring  it  to  rest.  A  feeling  without  a 
direction  is  as  impossible  as  an  activity  without  a  direc* 
tion  :  and  a  direction  implies  some  objective.  There  are 
vague  states  of  consciousness  in  which  we  seem  to  be 
wholly  without  direction  ;  but  in  such  cases  it  is  remark- 
able that  feeling  is  likewise  in  abeyance.  For  example, 
I  may  be  dazed  by  a  blow,  neither  realizing  what  has 
happened  nor  suffering  any  pain,  and  yet  quite  con- 
scious that  something  has  occurred  :  the  experience  waits 
an  instant  in  the  vestibule  of  consciousness,  not  as  feel- 
ing but  purely  as  fact,  until  idea  has  touched  it  and 
defined  a  course  of  response.  At  that  same  moment 
it  is  felt  as  painful.  If  we  are  right,  feeling  is  quite  as 
much  an  objective  consciousness  as  is  idea  :  it  refers 
always  to  something  beyond  the  present  self  and  has 
no  existence  save  in  directing  the  self  toward  that 
object  in  whose  presence  its  own  career  must  end. 

These  statements  are  most  obviously  true  of  the  feel- 
ings to  which  we  usually  apply  the  name  of  desire  :  for 
desire  is  clearly  desire  of  some  object  or  condition  not 
now  present,  and  in  obtaining  the  presence  of  that 


THE  DESTINY  OF  FEELING  67 

object  desire  ceases.  But  how  can  these  statements  be 
applied,  as  we  said,  to  the  feelings  of  satisfaction 
themselves?  Are  joy  and  triumph  also  unsatisfied 
states  ?  Is  pleasure,  dwelling  hard  on  its  present  object, 
such  a  seeking-process  as  we  have  here  pictured  ? 

As  to  pleasure,  it  wants  more  of  the  same  —  more 
than  it  now  has  :  that  is  what  defines  it  as  a  state  of 
feeling.  It  is  an  old  and  well-worn  analysis  of  pleasure 
which  identifies  it  with  a  tendency  to  approach  more 
nearly  the  object  which  gives  the  pleasure.  When  pleas- 
ure ceases  to  require  further  approach,  it  becomes  sim- 
ply a  vehement  cognizance  of  its  object :  its  character 
as  feeling  is  dissolved  into  a  state  of  knowledge.  As  to 
the  feeling  of  triumph  —  triumph,  "  unable  to  contain 
itself,"  has  certainly  much  to  do.  It  may  wear  itself  out 
in  shout  and  song.  More  probably  it  becomes  aware  of 
a  destination  which  is  common  to  most  of  our  positive 
feelings  —  namely,  a  social  aim  of  some  sort.  The  rest- 
lessness of  triumph  will  usher  the  subject  along  toward 
his  friends  or  his  populace,  until  in  physical  contact  with 
their  responses  (a  flood  height  within  balanced  by  an 
answering  flood  height  without),  the  internal  tumult  is 
appeased  and  feeling  disappears  —  into  what?  Into 
clear,  animated  cognizance:  cognizance  genially  dis- 
tributed over  the  new  situation  created  by  the  event  of 
triumph,  and  the  common  knowledge  of  it.  All  the 
"feelings  of  satisfaction"  so  far  as  there  is  feeling  left 
in  them,  in  the  same  way  move  on  to  cognizance. 
Heightened  feeling  hastens  to  fund  itself  in  heightened 
consciousness,  that  is,  in  a  keener  sensitiveness,  a  more 
unshrinking  objectivity. 

All  positive  feeling,  I  dare  now  say,  reaches  its  ter- 


68      RELIGIOUS  FEELING   AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

minus  in  knowledge.  All  feeling  means  to  instate  some 
experience  which  is  essentially  cognitive :  it  is  idea-apart- 
from-its-object  tending  to  become  idea-in-presence-of 
its-object,  which  is  "  cognizance/'  or  experiential  know- 
ledge. 

And  thus  knowledge,  which  of  old  has  had  the  dreary 
character  of  feeling-quencher,  must  also  be  accepted  as 
feeling-goal,  the  natural  absorbent  and  destiny  of  feel- 
ing. All  positive  feeling  is  at  heart  some  marriage  quest 
which  ends  in  knowing.  And  such  knowledge,  so  far 
from  being  less  a  (  value-consciousness  '  than  the  feeling 
which  has  led  up  to  it,  is  but  the  more  excellent  condi- 
tion of  that  very  value-consciousness  embodied  in  the 
feeling.  Such  feeling  so  far  from  being  less  a  "  fact- 
consciousness"  is,  in  its  guiding  idea,  throughout  a 
prophecy  of  the  fact ;  as  if  the  object  itself  were  press- 
ing to  be  known  in  presence.  In  the  satisfaction  of 
feeling,  the  guiding  idea  coalesces  immediately  with  the 
object  then  known  as  present :  to  the  including  mind 
there  is  perfect  continuity  between  prophecy  and  fulfil- 
ment —  the  feeling  is  unaware  of  death.  In  truth,  it  is 
not  dead,  but  risen  (aufgehoben)  :  cognizance  and  feel- 
ing are  but  different  stages  of  the  same  thing. 

These  observations  (superficial  as  they  still  are — and 
over-general) 1  must  modify  somewhat  our  impressions 

1  I  have  made  no  distinctions  between  the  several  meanings  of  the 
word  '  feeling,5  though  few  terms  in  the  language  are  so  highly  ambiguous. 
Nor  do  I  think  that  I  have  fallen  into  obscurity  on  that  account.  The 
mind  (we  as  psychologists  should  admit)  is  as  intricate  as  we  choose  to 
take  it  —  and  as  simple.  The  truth  about  our  inner  states  does  not  wait 
until  we  have  found  the  "  psychical  atom."  Some  truth  about  feeling 
may  be  conveyed,  even  without  definition. 


THE   DESTINY  OF  FEELING  69 

of  the  pragmatic  contrast  between  feeling  and  idea.  It 
is  true  that  ideas  apart  from  feelings  do  no  work :  but 
it  is  also  true  that  a  feeling  does  no  work  apart  from 
its  guiding  idea.  Though  feeling  is  close  to  action,  is 
incipient  action,  it  is  not  without  incipient  idea:  and  as 
this  idea  becomes  adequate,  the  working  effectiveness 
of  the  feeling  is  not  diminished,  but  enhanced.  If  the 
idea  is  vague  the  feeling  may  waste  itself  in  spluttering 
activity  with  little  satisfaction  ;  there  is  economy  of  con- 
duct in  proportion  as  feeling  (so  to  speak)  learns  its  own 
mind.  Thus,  whether  feai  leads  to  wild  flight  or  to  sim- 
ply climbing  a  tree  may  depend  on  the  "presence  of 
mind  "  in  the  feeling.  We  cannot  properly  draw  a  con- 
trast in  regard  to  working-power  between  idea  in  general 
and  feeling  in  general;  because  the  working-forces  of 
consciousness  are  neither  ideas  nor  feelings,  but  always 
idea-feeling  couples. 

Instead  of  contrast,  there  is  a  very  obvious  equivalence 

It  may  be  asked  whether  any  such  account  as  this  does  not  omit  what- 
ever makes  feeling  distinctive.  What  becomes  of  the  color  and  quality  of 
our  psychical  states  —  the  nuances  of  joy,  grief,  gaiety,  ease,  kindly  ex- 
pansiveness,  and  infinite  others,  which  temper  the  mind's  atmosphere  from 
moment  to  moment  ?  Whatever  ideas  and  transitions  toward  knowledge 
may  be  involved  in  these,  is  it  not  the  quality  and  flavor  which  we  lose, 
just  as  the  qualities  of  nature  are  lost  in  the  language  of  matter  and  mo- 
tion? It  is  true  that  such  quality,  in  itself,  is  precisely  what  no  description 
or  explanation  can  capture  —  or  need  to.  For  these  colors  of  the  mind  are 
to  be  predicated  always  of  the  whole  mental  state,  never  of  any  elements  of 
it.  Feeling-tones  of  this  sort  do  not  float  about  in  the  mind-current  like 
fish  in  a  stream,  nor  take  part  as  strands  in  a  total  movement :  they  are 
best  placed,  I  believe,  as  the  interest  which  the  mind  at  any  time  is  taking 
in  its  own  existence.  They  are  the  total  impression  which  living,  from  mo- 
ment to  moment,  is  making  upon  the  ultimate  liver.  Our  own  discussion 
is  concerned  with  what  goes  on  within  the  actual  mental  movement :  feel- 
ings as  we  are  concerned  with  them  are  distinguishable  working-elements 
in  that  movement. 


70      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

between  feeling  and  idea  in  this  respect,  such  that  idea 
may  gradually  substitute  itself  for  feeling  while  doing 
the  same  work.  The  guiding  idea  of  any  repeated  feel- 
ing becomes  by  degrees  more  adequate :  as  this  occurs, 
the  feeling  itself  seems  to  diminish,  as  if  it  had  been,  in 
part,  absorbed  or  transformed  into  the  idea.  Thus,  the 
emotional  side  of  love  inclines  to  transform  itself  into 
an  "understanding,"  in  which  the  meaning  of  the  feel- 
ing is  carried  out  in  the  system  of  ideas  and  actions 
which  constitute  permanent  friendship.  This  system  of 
active  understanding  is  precisely  what  the  original  emo- 
tion meant  and  prophesied ;  the  feeling  which  seems  lost 
has  its  living  equivalent  in  what  we  may  call  the  creed 
of  that  relationship.  And  it  will  reassert  itself  as  feeling 
if  those  habits  of  friendly  action  are  interrupted. 

Or  again,  a  feeling  of  distrust  toward  some  person, 
at  first  without  tangible  grounds,  succeeds  —  we  will 
suppose  —  in  defining  its  basis.  Thereafter,  conduct 
toward  the  distrusted  person  need  be  no  wholesale  re- 
jection or  avoidance  :  I  may  make  definite  negations  on 
definite  grounds ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  I  may  accept 
with  confidence  other  relations  in  which  the  defined  trait 
plays  no  part.  Such  definition  is  a  relief ;  a  degree  of 
mental  friction  disappears ;  feeling  is  less  intense :  the 
new  working-couple  (lowered  feeling,  heightened  idea) 
does  the  same  kind  of  work  as  the  older  working-couple, 
but  with  more  efficiency.  Knowledge  of  human  nature 
tends  to  place  men  instead  of  hating  them  or  blaming 
them  :  and  the  traditional  impassivity  of  this  kind  of 
wisdom  is  no  absence  of  feeling,  but  only  a  relatively 
complete  translation  of  emotion  into  a  working  creed. 

In  practice,  we  reckon  a  feeling  of  aversion  toward 


THE   DESTINY  OF  FEELING  71 

any  project  as  equivalent  to  some  reason  against  it:  and 
a  feeling  of  attraction  counts  as  some  reason  in  its  favor. 
In  any  public  arena,  feelings  and  thoughts  thus  mingle 
upon  the  same  footing ;  they  are  added  and  subtracted 
as  coin  of  the  same  mint  in  all  the  actual  transactions 
of  persuasion.  But  in  any  such  arena,  to  become  explicit 
is  a  gain.  One  often  yields  his  feeling  to  the  pressure 
of  tangible  considerations  with  the  impression  that  the 
feeling  must  have  been  victor  if  it  could  have  met  the 
tangible  on  its  own  ground.  The  prejudice  which  can 
get  itself  formulated  in  language  has  an  immense  ad- 
vantage in  the  struggle  for  existence.  Or,  it  is  known 
for  what  it  is,  and  done  away  with.  However  great  one's 
faith  in  the  un-idead  regions  of  existence,  that  faith  is 
newly-born  when  through  some  stroke  of  conception, 
outlines  of  a  felt  foundation  loom  for  the  first  time  out 
of  obscurity  into  relief.  The  feeling  has  been  an  antici- 
patory thought,  a  fact  throughout  of  the  same  nature. 

A  large  part  of  what  we  call  thinking  is  nothing 
other  than  the  effort  to  gain  this  kind  of  possession  of 
our  more  helpless  meanings.  Poetry  (playground  of  ideas) 
is  the  form  in  which  the  feeling  or  spirit  of  an  age  wins 
its  first  breath  ;  and  philosophy  (idea  hard-labor-ground) 
attempts  the  complete  transformation  of  the  feeling  into 
literality,  which  means  connection  with  earth.  In  all 
this,  we  have  continuity  and  equivalence  between  idea 
and  feeling,  quite  as  significant  as  in  any  physical 
'  equivalence  and  transformation  of  forces.'  To  make  an 
aspiration  or  a  motive  visible  in  idea  is  not  to  render  it 
more  abstract,  is  not  to  alter  its  identity  or  its  character 
or  its  pragmatic  bearing ;  it  is  simply  to  give  it  status 
among  other  expressed  tendencies.  This  pragmatic  equiv- 


72       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

alence  is  a  confirmation  of  the  substantial  sameness  of 
idea  and  feeling ;  of  the  destiny  of  feeling  to  fund 
itself  in  idea. 

These  general  characteristics  of  feeling  hold  good  of 
religious  feeling.  Feeling  is  known  as  religious,  rather 
than  as  some  other  sort,  by  the  peculiarity  of  its  objects 
and  ideas.  Fear  is  a  fundamental  element  in  religious 
feeling  ;  but  what  distinguishes  a  given  type  of  fear  as 
religious  ?  Why  is  it  that  such  fear  appears  only  in  the 
human  being,  not  in  the  animal  ?  Because  it  is  roused 
by  a  situation  which  it  requires  human  imagination  to 
grasp.  Some  conception  of  the  Whole  of  things,  some 
super-stition  is  necessary  before  that  fear  can  take  hold 
of  the  mind,  even  though  it  be  excited  by  purely  natu- 
ral happenings.  The  same  of  religious  hope  and  wor- 
ship. The  same  of  religious  attainment,  and  the  feeling 
of  assurance  which  comes  of  it.  In  a  human  being,  to 
"  feel  sure  "  and  to  know  one's  ground  are  one  and 
the  same  thing  —  perhaps  in  different  stages  of  distinct- 
ness. If  religious  enthusiasm  comes  to  rest  in  a  state  of 
'  peace/  this  state  is  a  state  of  feeling  only  in  that 
same  metamorphosis  by  which  all  feeling  in  its  satisfac- 
tion vanishes  in  cognizance,  the  sting  of  restlessness 
having  been  drawn.  The  Stoic's  summit  was  apathy  — 
non-feeling :  religion  also  wins  a  non-feeling  —  but  a 
positive  sort  —  let  us  say,  metapathy,  a  state  beyond 
feeling,  not  beneath  it.  What  feeling  was  has  not 
ceased  to  be ;  but  it  exists  as  a  heightened  value 
diffused  over  all  experience.  The  measure  of  life  is 
increased;  and  that  measure  is  perhaps  well  enough 
described  at  present  as  a  measure  of  cognitive  pene- 


THE  DESTINY  OF  FEELING  73 

tration.  Religious  success  becomes,  T  think,  precisely 
this :  an  unshrinking  objectivity. 

The  strains  of  religious  feeling  belong  especially  to 
that  period  of  life  in  which  one  is  working  out  his 
Weltanschauung.  Conversion  is  in  part  at  least  the 
grasping  of  an  idea ;  such  an  idea  as  can  thereafter  in- 
fuse itself  with  peaceful  dominance  through  the  system 
of  conduct  and  belief.  Starbuck  calls  attention  to  the 
value  of  intellectual  points  of  fixation  in  tiding  over  the 
storms  and  stresses  of  adolescence  :  without  some  ideas 
through  which  feeling  can  win  an  interpretation,  "  one 
is  torn  by  he  knows  not  what."  And  the  storm  and 
stress  itself  may  be  regarded  as  a  process  of  deep  think- 
ing, carried  on  by  the  whole  organism. 

Religious  feeling,  then,  like  other  feeling,  is  all  idea- 
material,  idea-activity.  Dissolve  out  the  idea-tissue  of 
religion,  and  no  feeling,  and  so  no  religion,  is  left. 
Holding  our  pragmatic  test  to  religion,  requiring  of  it 
that  it  do  its  work,  we  will  have  no  religion  without  a 
theory ;  we  will  have  no  religion  without  a  creed. 

Religion  as  feeling  must  aspire  to  complete  self -under- 
standing and  ultimately  to  a  complete  transformation 
of  all  its  emotion  into  a  present  knowledge  of  its  de- 
sired object,  whatever  that  may  be.  This  truth  pre- 
vents us  from  resting  satisfied  with  feeling:  but  it  is  fair 
to  observe  that  it  does  not  provide  us,  as  yet,  with  any 
substitute.  We  have  not  yet  enquired  what  the  essen- 
tial meaning  of  religious  feeling  is  ;  nor  have  we  at  all 
shown  that  such  sure  self -understanding  and  ultimate 
satisfaction  can  be  obtained.  It  remains  possible,  so  far 
as  we  have  yet  shown,  that  our  religious  impulses  must 


74      RELIGIOUS   FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

continue,  so  long  as  we  are  human,  to  grope  for  their 
own  meaning :  and  it  may  still  be  held  that  the  ideas 
which  religious  feeling  makes  use  of  must  always  be 
partly  mistaken,  tentative,  and  mythical. 

The  supposition  that  religion  must  put  up  with  im- 
perfect equipment  of  theory  does  no  violence  to  human 
nature  as  we  otherwise  know  it.  It  is  a  notorious  fact 
that  feelings  may  frequently  find  their  satisfactions 
through  misfit  ideas.  My  ill-temper,  in  search  for  its 
own  theory,  is  more  than  likely  to  adopt  a  false  one  and 
expend  itself  on  some  innocent  head.  If  a  nation  is 
lusting  for  war,  no  one  can  foresee  on  what  pretext  the- 
ories of  offended  national  honor  or  of  manifest  destiny 
may  make  fatal  alliance  with  the  belligerent  impulse. 
Such  mistaken  self-interpretation  is  not  always  the  fault 
of  feeling,  but  often  its  fate :  for  it  can  only  press  into 
service  such  ideas  as  are  at  hand.  The  deeper  and 
obscurer  cravings  and  discomforts  of  body  and  soul 
must  frequently  be  diagnosed  by  the  sufferer  almost  in 
the  dark,  with  a  slender  gamut  of  hypotheses ;  it  is  not 
surprising  if  many  a  self-made  invalid  results  from  a 
faulty  theory  of  one's  own  feeling,  fit  to  be  cured  by  a 
course  of  bread-pills  or  other  placebos.  And  who  will 
say  that  the  various  religious  doctrines  of  mankind,  min- 
istering as  they  do  to  the  obscure  spiritual  cravings  of 
the  race,  have  not  acted  rather  as  placebos  than  as  lit- 
eral interpretations  and  satisfactions  of  these  feelings? 
Harmless  remedies  for  the  most  part,  because  very  likely 
there  is  no  such  explicit  truth  here  to  be  had  —  none, 
therefore,  to  be  conflicted  with :  they  serve  their  func- 
tion in  setting  the  mind  at  peace,  and  harmonizing  the 
active  impulses  of  the  empirical  self. 


THE   DESTINY  OF  FEELING  75 

Let  us  be  at  one  with  our  saints,  as  in  reality  we  are 
3ne  with  them,  in  the  drama  of  their  moral  will.  And 
let  us  be  free  of  the  allegory  in  which  they  depict  to 
themselves  that  drama,  free  to  take  other  allegories  as 
well,  or  to  put  forth  our  own.  I  read  Augustine  with 
wonder  :  but  with  the  greater  nearness  when  I  see  (as 
who  can  fail  to  see)  that  his  spiritual  crises  hang  upon, 
and  swing  about,  intellectual  snags  irrelevant  to  the 
real  issue  —  whether  God  is  extended  in  space,  whether 
evil  is  a  substance,  whether  Paul  contradicts  Moses  and 
himself :  why  dost  thou  halt  upon  these  matters,  friend 
Augustine,  if  not  to  delay  the  course  of  that  dreaded 
moral  requirement  so  great  in  thee?  The  settlement 
of  thy  problem,  which  looks  so  much  like  a  theoretical 
result,  —  is  it  not  in  truth  an  inevitable  moral  deci- 
sion, governed  from  afar  by  thy  deep  religious  feeling, 
playing  itself  out  in  terms  of  speculative  issues  which 
only  symbolize  the  inner  meaning  of  the  process  ? 

This  well-known  point  of  view  is  quite  compatible 
with  what  we  have  said  about  the  destiny  of  feeling: 
and  it  can  only  be  dealt  with  by  a  direct  enquiry  into 
religious  knowledge.  But  one  or  two  remarks  may  be 
made  before  beginning  that  enquiry. 

It  is  obvious,  I  think,  that  no  one  would  adopt  such 
a  position  as  this  if  he  believed  that  a  more  satisfactory 
status  of  idea  were  possible.  And  further,  no  one  can  in 
reality  make  use  of  religious  ideas  which  he  believes  to 
be  thus  mythical.  It  is  quite  possible  to  adopt  a  mistaken 
theory,  believing  it  to  be  true ;  but  it  is  not  possible  to 
adopt  a  mistaken  theory  believing  it  to  be  mistaken,  or 
even  allegorical.  Our  real  theory  is  the  meaning  of  that 
allegory  as  we  understand  it,  and  not  the  allegory  itself. 


76      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS   THEORY 

Feeling  is  a  thing  which  cannot,  in  its  own  nature,  re- 
main in  the  dark.  Whatever  our  Most  Enlightened 
View  about  the  nature  of  religious  truth  may  be,  that 
Most  Enlightened  View  becomes,  willy  nilly,  the  rule  for 
our  feeling.  The  more  vehement  the  feeling,  the  more 
it  resents  darkness  (and  certainly  all  deliberate  parasol- 
protection)  and  pushes  for  clarity.  In  their  demand  for 
idea,  our  major  feelings  rather  possess  us  than  we  them. 
More  especially  the  race- old  feelings  we  call  religious  will 
hold  to  their  service  all  of  our  new  and  best  insights,  all 
our  detection s-of-general-religious-mistake,  all  our  suspi- 
cions of  subjective-intention-in-objective-myth:  they  will 
identify  themselves  with  these  insights,  partial  and  unsat- 
isfactory as  they  are,  until  we  provide  an  idea-system 
which  is  fit,  necessary,  and  adequate  to  our  present 
stage  of  self-conscious  attainment. 

NOTE.  In  the  four  following  chapters  (chapters  vii-x), 
dealing  chiefly  with  the  competence  of  the  idea,  it  will  be 
necessary  to  consider  certain  adverse  positions,  as  of  Bergson 
and  Hoffding.  These  chapters  though  as  little  technical  as 
possible  may  have  for  the  general  reader  a  difficulty  which  I 
cannot  wholly  avoid.  If  any  such  reader  finds  that  these  prob- 
lems are  not  his  own  problems,  I  may  advise  him  to  omit  these 
chapters,  passing  at  once  to  chapter  xi,  which  resumes  the 
argument  as  we  now  leave  it,  stating  a  proposition  regarding 
the  organic  relation  of  idea  and  feeling  which  is  fundamental 
to  our  whole  view  of  religion.  Then  in  chapter  xii,  the  theory 
that  religious  truth  depends  on  the  will  is  discussed  in  detail, 
both  in  the  form  in  which  James  states  it  —  the  well-known 
will-to-believe  —  and  in  the  form  in  which  Koyce  holds  it  — 
namely,  that  reality  is  the  fulfilment  of  an  absolute  purpose. 
This  chapter,  again  somewhat  refractory,  concludes  the  labo- 
rious controversial  part  of  our  work. 


CHAPTER  VII 
HOW  IDEAS  OF  IDEAS  MISREPRESENT  THEM 

WE  have  said  that  feeling  has  need  of  idea ;  that  it 
can  get  no  pragmatic  hold  on  us  without  idea ;  that 
it  has  no  existence  except  as  it  were  a  suicidal  one — to 
disappear  in  knowledge.  We  might  further  have  said 
that  except  through  idea  feeling  cannot  consciously  com- 
municate itself.  Our  feelings  we  do,  for  the  most  part, 
instinctively  seek  to  share :  few  feelings  are  not  improved 
by  social  reflection.  But  if  we  have  a  pleasure  or  a  grief 
to  express  to  another,  we  do  so  (if  we  can)  by  telling 
the  tale,  or  by  pointing  out  the  object,  on  which  the 
feeling  depends;  not  by  simply  showing  the  feeling,  or 
explaining  it.  If  we  must  give  the  clue  to  the  fun,  or  to 
the  sorrow,  or  to  the  admiration,  by  our  own  prior  grimace 
or  gesture  (not  to  say  word),  we  know  there  is  loss  in 
passage :  if  we  are  so  far  overcome  that  we  have  nothing 
but  emotion  to  give,  we  are  pitiable  —  or  ridiculous. 

It  is  seldom,  indeed,  with  our  limited  control  of  idea, 
that  an  emotion  passes  from  mind  to  mind  by  idea  alone, 
or  can  so  pass :  but  the  communicator  is  bound  in  good 
faith  to  bring  forward  what  idea  he  can,  with  all  prompt- 
ness, and  to  rest  his  case  on  that.  There  is  an  ethics  in 
the  communication  of  whatever  feeling,  binding  the  com- 
municator to  the  limit  of  his  powers  to  be  objective,  to 
make  no  conscious  exploit  of  his  own  affectedness.  This 
rule  of  first  intentions  must  hold,  I  fancy,  with  extreme 


78      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

rigor  in  the  case  of  religious  feeling.  It  would  be  no 
crime  in  an  actor  if  he  should  try  to  make  me  weep  by 
himself  weeping  (though  he  would  do  better  to  show  a 
great  effort  at  repressing  his  tears) :  but  what  outrage 
when  the  like  occurs  in  religion !  The  spirit  of  the 
prophet  who  has  communicated  his  religion,  and  his 
feeling  therewith,  by  the  circuitous  way  of  idea  and 
doctrine  is  right  —  is  alone  right.  Passion  in  history 
retains  its  soundness  and  force  just  so  long  as  it  forgets 
itself  and  holds  to  its  objects.  All  else  puffs  out,  or 
putrefies.  The  taint  of  emotional  exploitation  on  the 
part  of  the  more  sophisticated  trustees  of  religion  must 
long  since  have  killed  the  church  had  it  not  been  for  the 
sound  objectivity  of  the  people.  Their  exploitableness 
is  their  moral  superiority. 

Attempts  on  the  part  of '  the  enlightened '  to  take  with 
the  same  objective  good-faith  the  words  of  the  prophets 
must  meet  with  many  defeats;  to  find  the  tenable  ideas 
of  religion  is  indeed  no  easy  matter:  but  it  is  the  temper 
of  defeat  to  cry  too  early,  All  is  lost!  The  mutual 
cancellations  of  our  divergent  religious  thoughts  and 
theories  leave  no  idea  in  the  whole  field  unquestioned  : 
but  it  has  yet  to  be  shown  that  all  idea  is  thereby 
eliminated  and  impossible.  Idea  has  many  lives,  is 
of  tougher  substance  than  we  think  ;  and  has  perhaps 
greater  resources  for  grasping  the  remote  and  super- 
sensible parts  of  reality. 

We  need  to  enquire  into  the  capacity  of  our  instru- 
ments of  knowledge.  Most  of  our  prevalent  doubts 
regarding  our  ability  to  reach  knowledge  in  religion  are 
based  on  false  conceptions  of  what  an  idea  is.  These 
false  conceptions  are  natural  enough;  it  is  hard  to  make 


HOW  IDEAS  OF  IDEAS  MISREPRESENT  THEM        79 

an  idea  of  an  idea  that  will  not  misrepresent  it.  For  it 
is  natural  to  think  of  ideas  as  we  think  of  things  — men, 
bricks,  magnitudes,  events.  We  cannot  think  of  any 
idea  that  is  not  an  idea  of  something :  and  in  thinking 
of  the  idea,  that  something  shines  through  the  transpar- 
ent substance  of  the  idea  itself,  and  our  thought  of  the 
idea  becomes  mixed  with  our  thought  of  the  idea's 
object.  We  need  constantly  to  remind  ourselves  that 
our  ideas  are  what  we  think  with,  not  what  we  think  of, 
in  the  order  of  nature.  When  we  try  to  think  q/"an 
idea,  we  are  proceeding  in  some  way  against  nature, 
taking  nature  backward:  it  is  not  surprising  if  in  our 
attempts  to  do  this  the  resulting  conception  of  the  idea 
is  denatured  to  some  extent,  and  so  misjudged. 

The  first  objects  which  are  taken  up  in  great  numbers 
into  our  knowledge  are  objects  of  the  physical  world, 
fixed  in  outline,  mechanical  for  the  most  part,  and  finite : 
it  seems  to  us,  then,  that  our  ideas  of  these  objects  par- 
ticipate in  these  qualities,  and  the  consequences  of  this 
impression  are  far-reaching.  For  if  ideas  have  about 
them  some  inherent  rigidity  and  finitude,  if  intellect  is 
indeed  a  mechanical  affair,  they  can  do  no  justice  to 
reality  in  its  infinitude  and  its  incessant  flux  and 
change.  The  kind  of  knowledge  of  ultimate  things 
which  religion  has  supposed  itself  to  need  —  nay,  the 
very  conceptions  of  those  objects,  the  familiar  terms 
of  religious  doctrines  —  are  scientifically  impossible.  I 
wish,  then,  to  examine  our  ideas  of  ideas ;  and  to  con- 
sider in  the  first  place  the  supposed  rigidity  of  ideas. 

An  idea,  it  seems,  is  a  piece  of  one's  mind  :  a  piece  so 
delimited,  outlined  (decoupee),  that  it  can  be  individu- 


80      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

ally  used,  handled,  referred  to.  One  cannot  handle  the 
ocean  :  but  water-buckets-full,  casks-full,  tanks-full,  taken 
out  of  the  ocean  can  be  handled  well  enough.  Such 
water-bucket,  or  other  vessel,  has  known  contents:  it  is 
a  bit  of  the  ocean,  bound,  measured,  put  under  control, 
lifted  into  relief  from  out  of  the  general  wash  of  waters, 
and  set  to  work.  Such  is  "  an  idea"  in  the  general  flux 
of  consciousness:  a  vessel  of  known  contents,  manipu- 
lable,  destined  to  some  work.  And  to  what  work  ?  In 
part,  at  least,  to  such  work  as  is  performed  by  coins, 
vessels  of  value :  namely,  to  possess  me  of  my  valuables 
in  convenient,  storable  form ;  to  measure  and  assess  the 
worth  of  new  facts,  recognizing  them  in  their  bearing 
upon  my  actions;  also  to  serve  as  unit  of  exchange, 
whereby  such  pieces  of  my  mind  may  be  passed  on  to 
others.  What  better  simplest  image  or  symbol  of  idea 
could  be -de vised  than  the  circle  —  an  enclosed  bit  of 
space  of  known  contents  —  precisely  such  symbol  as  is 
in  common  use  among  logicians  ? 

This,  I  think,  fairly  describes  our  usual  conception  of 
an  idea.  And  such  images  as  these  of  the  water-bucket, 
the  coin,  the  circle,  contain  all  that  is  true  in  our  usual 
conception,  together  with  all  that  is  false.  They  contain 
enough  truth  to  be  exceedingly  useful,  enough  also  to  be 
exceedingly  seductive.  So  far  does  the  correspondence 
between  ideas  and  the  logician's  circle-diagrams  hold 
good,  that  logic  itself  may  appear  to  be  nothing  more 
than  a  sort  of  space-play  or  topology,  our  thinking  pro- 
cesses a  sort  of  "  geometrizing." 1  Our  conception  of  the 

1  Bergson's  epithet.  It  is  indeed  sufficiently  remarkable  that  our 
thought-relations  can  be  represented  at  all  in  terms  of  space-relations  —  not 
to  say  so  completely  represented.  It  has  often  excited  speculation  that 


HOW  IDEAS  OF  IDEAS  MISREPRESENT  THEM        81 

idea  begins  to  partake  of  the  rigidity,  the  lifelessness, 
the  finitude  of  these  inevitable  images.  And  we  can 
hardly  better  win  a  true  idea  of  idea  than  by  enquiring 
how  far  these  spatial  symbols,  circles  and  the  rest,  are 
appropriate  and  valid;  and  where  they  begin  to  work 
false. 

In  the  first  place,  our  spatial  symbols  represent  truly 
the  definite  inclusions  and  exclusions  of  our  ideas.  One 
is  said  to  have  an  idea  of  an  object  when  he  can  recog- 
nize it,  and  tell  it  from  every  other  thing  in  the  world. 
Ideas  do  not  always  accomplish  this  infallible  identifica- 
tion of  their  object.  Most  ideas  of  actual  things  have 
doubtful  boundaries  —  as  of  animal  from  plant,  or  of 
river  from  brook  —  their  lines  are  less  sharp  than  the 
circle  ;  but  the  ideal  idea  knows  its  own,  and  excludes 
even  more  sharply  than  any  actual  circle-outline ;  more 
sharply,  in  fact,  than  any  except  the  boundary  of  the 
idea-circle.  The  power  of  perfect  definition  is  con- 
ferred on  the  circle  by  the  idea,  not  on  the  idea  by  the 
circle.  In  this  matter  of  definite  inclusion  and  exclu- 
sion, then,  the  circle  does  not  misrepresent  the  idea. 

In  the  second  place,  each  idea  has  its  own  changeless 

some  deep-going  vital  unity  must  obtain  between  the  structure  of  space  and 
the  structure  of  intellect.  It  has  been  a  great  point  with  idealism  ;  support- 
ing the  notion  that  space  is  but  the  mind  itself,  externalized,  and  readable 
by  the  mind  as  a  foreign  object.  F.  A.  Lange,  in  particular,  was  much  im- 
pressed by  this  correspondence.  And  most  recently  M.  Bergson  has  thrown 
a  biological  light  on  the  matter  by  reminding  us  that  intellect  and  phys- 
ical world  have  grown  up  together  in  the  course  of  evolution  ;  that  they 
have  been  modeled  for  each  other,  to  some  extent  also,  by  each  other;  that 
the  intellect  inevitably  "  geometrizes  "  because  it  is  its  primary  nature, 
not  to  know  self  or  reality,  but  to  guide  our  physical  conduct  to  its  phys- 
ically practical  ends.  The  correspondence,  then,  has  attained  a  certain 
philosophical  celebrity. 


82       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

identity,  a  character  fitly  represented  by  the  circle,  or  by 
any  other  fixable  object.  To  suppose  an  idea  to  change 
is  to  suppose  it  to  become  another  idea.  We  could  never 
recognize  an  object  as  being  the  same  object  unless  we 
infallibly  meant  the  same :  nay,  we  could  never  know 
a  thing  as  not  the  same  unless  we  were  sure  of  a  same- 
ness of  meaning.  Permanence  of  meaning,  taken  in 
total,  is  but  our  own  mental  integrity,  our  personal  iden- 
tity itself.  The  permanence  and  sameness,  then,  of  any 
poor  chalk-circle,  or  world-orbit  for  that  matter,  is 
infinitely  unfit  to  symbolize  the  unwavering  sameness  of 
idea,  save  for  a  short  span,  and  by  leave  of  the  idea 
itself.  It  is  the  idea  again  that  confers  identity  on  the 
circle,  not  the  circle  that  confers  identity  upon  the  idea. 
In  this  matter  of  changelessness,  then,  the  circle  cannot 
misrepresent  the  idea,  for  it  has  no  other  changelessness 
than  that  of  the  idea  itself. 

If,  then,  we  admit  these  characters  of  the  idea  found 
in  the  symbol  —  its  changeless  identity,  and  its  aim  to 
be  perfectly  defined  and  exclusive  —  do  we  not  also  ad- 
mit that  the  idea  is  rigid,  even  as  the  symbol  is ;  and 
therefore  equally  unable  to  deal  with  this  living  world 
as  it  is  ? 

M.  Bergson  is  at  this  hour  most  impressively  insisting 
upon  the  fatal  discrepancy  between  a  reality  which  is 
fluent,  passing,  ever-growing,  and  an  idea-world  which 
is  static,  rigid,  conservative,  mechanizing  what  it  touches. 
There  is  something  about  change,  especially  about  life- 
change,  which  never  gets  caught  in  our  ideas  :  this  fact 
the  history  of  thought  has  repeatedly  been  compelled 
to  notice.  The  idea  seems  not  only  to  fail,  but  somehow 


HOW  IDEAS  OF  IDEAS  MISREPRESENT  THEM        83 

to  falsify,  when  it  intends  to  grasp  a  living  thing  :  as 
if  in  fixing  it,  it  had  also  transfixed  it,  and  could  carry 
about  but  a  dead  image. 

Now,  I  must  confess  that  in  all  such  criticisms  of  the 
idea  I  seem  to  see  pointed  out  rather  defects  in  our  hu- 
man industry  and  loyalty  than  any  inherent  defect  of 
the  idea  itself:  for  if  an  unchanging  idea  is  sufficiently 
true  to  its  object,  it  must  entertain  every  change  and 
development  in  that  object.  It  must  change  just  because 
it  is  constant;  it  must  change  in  content  because  it  is 
changeless  in  meaning.  I  can  see  that  there  is  much 
human  idleness  to  be  overcome  in  keeping  our  ideas  fresh 
while  their  objects  are  developing ;  I  can  also  see  that 
a  satisfactory  life-theory,  mind-theory,  world-theory,  will 
require  of  us  infinite  racial  labor.  But  I  know  not  how 
to  describe  this  labor  except  as  the  labor  of  idea-making. 
The  "  inherent  discrepancy  "  eludes  me  ;  seems,  to  speak 
plainly,  a  demonstrable  confusion.  For  that  with  which 
the  "  rigid  idea"  is  contrasted  is  the  "fluent  reality" 
held  up  to  contemplation  —  of  which  "fluent  reality" 
then  we  have  some  idea :  and  can  it  be  that  this  idea  of 
the  "  fluent  reality"  is  itself  also  rigid?  Is  this  fixed- 
ness, or  unbending  idea-quality,  idea-starch,  such  that  no 
valid  meaning  is  contained  or  containable  in  those  con- 
ceptions we  name  ( change,'  '  growth,'  or  even  *  wilting,' 
6  deliquescing,'  *  melting,' '  dissolving,'  and  the  like  ?  On 
the  contrary,  no  ideas  are  more  useful  and  more  used 
than  these  ideas  of  change  by  M.  Bergson  and  the  other 
authors  in  question.  To  know  these  things,  it  is  said, 
we  must  revert  to  immediate  experience.  But  whatever 
can  interest  in  experience  is  already  caught  in  idea :  there 
is  nothing  in  experience  which  cannot  become  content 


84       RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

of  idea,  for  what  else  is  the  (empirical)  idea  but  selected 
experience,  in  shape  for  memory  and  communication? 
Idea  is  a  universal  tool,  making  no  demands  upon  its 
subject-matter.  It  takes  the  contour  with  perfect  faith- 
fulness, perfect  transparency,  perfect  non-interference, 
of  whatever  can  hold  (through  whatever  movement  or 
metamorphosis)  the  same  interest.  Give  me  an  interest 
in  a  cloud,  or  in  a  revolution :  at  no  point  do  I  find  my 
pursuit  of  that  shifting  object  barred  by  some  stiff-joint 
of  my  idea.  Give  me  an  interest  in  the  thing  you  call 
reality,  and  if  it  is  to  be  met  with  in  experience  at  all, 
nothing  can  prevent  idea  from  holding  it,  in  all  its  flux 
or  creativity.  Whatever  character  you  give  this  reality, 
in  mentioning  that  character  you  have  already  confessed 
an  idea  of  it.  Indeed,  it  is  futile  to  define  any  region  of 
the  world  as  the  exclusive  or  favorite  region  of  idea : 
for  the  only  force  which  can  confine  idea  to  such 
domain  is  the  force  of  idea  itself. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  these  considerations  are  unfelt 
by  such  a  thinker  as  M.  Bergson.  Not  only  is  he  aware 
of  them;  he  anticipates  them.  It  is  not  impossible  to 
think  change,  he  says,  but  only  almost  impossible.  It 
is  counter  to  our  mental  habit  (habitude  statique  de 
notre  intelligence);  it  is  like  climbing  backward  the  slope 
of  our  confirmed  intellectual  direction  (remonter  la  pente, 
etc.).  While  ideas  of  qualities  (adjectives)  and  ideas  of 
forms  (nouns)  clearly  choose  to  mean  only  states,  still- 
states,  of  our  world,  ideas  of  action  and  change  (verbs) 
have  a  tinge  of  the  non-static  in  them ;  yet  they  too  are 
interested  not  in  the  process  per  se,  but  in  the  terminals 
thereof;  they  present  chiefly  a  picture  of  the  ends  of 
the  movement,  and  a  still-chart  of  its  course.  "  I/idee* 


HOW  IDEAS   OF  IDEAS   MISREPRESENT  THEM       85 

du  changement  est  la,  je  le  veux  bien,  mais  elle  se  cache 
dans  la  penombre.  En  pleine  lumiere  il  y  a  le  dessin 
immobile  de  Facte  suppose  accompli  .  .  .  Adjectifs  et 
substantifs  symbolisent  done  des  etats.  Mais  le  verbe 
lui-meme,  si  Ton  s'en  tient  a  la  partie  eclairee  de  la  re- 
presentation qu'il  evoque,  n'exprhne  guere  autre  chose."  1 
Significant  "guere."  Significant  "  penombre."  Bring- 
ing into  some  question  that  striking  definition  of  the 
idea  (though  only  of  the  Greek  elSo?)  as  a  flash-view, 
or  instant  (la  vue  stable  prise  sur  Tinstabilite  des  choses). 
Bringing  into  some  question  also  that  famous  figure  of 
the  intellect  as  a  moving-picture  apparatus,  dealing  es- 
sentially only  in  such  instantaneous  views,  mechanically 
fused  together  (mecanisme  cinematographique  de  la  pen- 
see).  For  what  is  it  that  rejoins  these  separate  flashes 
of  the  actual  moving-pictures  into  a  continuum  of  move- 
ment ?  Not,  for  us,  the  mechanical  apparatus;  for  that 
emits  nothing  but  discontinuous  flashes  (with  due  inter- 
val, to  be  sure,  and  regularity.)  What  rejoins  them 
if  not  our  own  way  of  interpreting,  perhaps  of  sensing, 
the  succession  ?  But  hardly  of  sensing,  nor  yet  of  per- 
ceiving, if  M.  Bergson  is  right :  for  perception,  accord- 
ing to  him,  rather  turns  motions  into  states,  than  states 
into  motions  (notre  perception  ne  doit  guere  retenir  du 
monde  materiel,  a  tout  instant,  qu'un  etat  ou  provisoire- 
ment  elle  sepose.)2  One  knows  not  where  to  look,  if  this 
is  so,  except  to  our  own  ideas.  At  all  events,  the  con- 
tinuous-change character  is  something  not  here  found  in 
the  data  of  immediate  experience,  is  something  added 
by  us  to  those  data  out  of  our  own  meanings.  Some 
idealistic  path  seems  to  open  out  here —  "  idea-creator- 

1  Involution  cr&itrice,  p.  328,  3me  ed.  2  Ibid.  p.  326. 


86      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS   THEORY 

of-its-own-world,"  or  the  like :  into  this  path  we  shall 
not  enter.  But  must  we  not  perforce  admit  change 
and  rest,  static  and  non-static,  to  full  coordinacy,  so  far 
as  our  idea-power  is  concerned? 

Idea  does  no  doubt  enable  us  to  store  change  in  mem- 
ory, as  hardly  it  is  storable  in  fact.  Thus  stored,  we 
are  able  to  dwell  upon  it,  retrace  it,  in  such  retracing 
to  alter  its  rate  as  we  will, — pass  from  beginning  to  end 
with  indefinite  speed  (change  intense),  or  from  end  to 
beginning,  or  pause  to  take  the  time  of  its  passage 
through  this  point  and  through  that  —  but  in  all  these 
liberties  taken,  we  are  under  no  deceit.  Unless  time 
could  be  remembered  as  it  is,  there  could  be  no  mind; 
if  keeping  the  past  in  present  view  denatured  time,  and 
turned  it  into  a  sort  of  space  —  time  itself  would  drop 
out  of  meaning,  and  out  of  reality,  for  us.  A  present 
idea,  and  an  idea  of  a  present,  are  not  necessarily  the 
same;  a  changeless  idea  and  an  idea  of  only-the-change- 
less  are  not  equivalent  phrases.  Has  not  M.  Bergson 
fallen  into  the  error  from  which  he  himself  would  warn 
us,  that  of  applying  to  the  idea  the  characters  of  its 
(physical)  objects? 

And  if  we  wish  to  know  the  real  source  of  such  diffi- 
culties as  the  mind  falls  into  in  gaining  an  explication 
of  reality,  shall  we  not  find  it  rather  in  the  exigencies 
of  finishing  our  idea-systems  than  in  the  incompetence 
of  the  individual  idea  ?  The  paradoxes  of  Zeno  are  due, 
not  to  the  difficulty  of  grasping  motion  in  idea,  but  to 
the  difficulty  of  putting  the  idea  of  motion  into  terms  of 
the  idea  of  rest.  The  incommensurables  are  both  in  the 


HOW  IDEAS   OF  IDEAS  MISREPRESENT  THEM       87 

region  of  ideas;  the  dilemmas  arise  from  the  necessity 
of  clarifying  our  ideas  by  relating  them  to  other  ideas; 
eventually,  of  explaining  a  thing  in  terms  of  what  it  is 
not.  Thus  may  it  not  be  with  reality  also?  If  it 
appears  in  experience,  then  also  in  idea:  but  whether 
the  idea  can  make  connections  with  other  ideas  is  not 
thereby  decided.  These  other  ideas  try  to  gain  rela- 
tions to  the  idea  of  reality,  that  is,  to  set  up  predicates 
for  our  idea :  but  the  predicates  may  not  fit. 

It  is  chiefly  our  idea-connections  and  systems  that 
threaten  to  stiffen  and  falsify  the  living  thing.  To  be 
forewarned  that  any  such  idea-connection  is  liable  to 
need  revision  is  to  escape  the  consequences  of  rational- 
istic rigidity,  without  abandoning  the  needful  work  of 
system-making.  We  cannot  cease  to  observe  that  S  is 
P ;  but  we  can  enter  the  caveat  — "  with  reservations  and 
conditions,  not  yet  wholly  known."  System-making 
cannot  cease,  because  in  part  it  is  the  life  of  the  mind 
itself  —  expressible  as  an  automatic  process  in  part. 
Every  idea,  we  might  say  (again  with  justified  psychical 
mechanics),  attracts  every  other  idea — tempts  it  into 
some  union  or  other,  for  which  it  may  or  may  not  be  fit. 
The  number  of  mechanical  ideas  we  possess  is  hereby  a 
perpetual  menace  to  the  integrity  and  virtue  of  the  non- 
mechanical.  Ideas  of  life  and  of  living  things  are  thus 
constantly  exposed  to  mesalliance)  need  continually  to 
be  guarded  from  mechanization.  This,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  is  the  real  meaning  of  the  complaint  that  our  ideas 
are  rigid  and  cannot  do  justice  to  reality.  We  have 
a  greater  population  of  mechanical  ideas  than  of  others 
— they  are  "the  masses  "  in  our  mental  State  —  whence 
a  certain  instability  of  the  others  in  their  rightful 


88      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

place.  The  remedy  is  first,  in  simply  knowing  the  dan- 
ger; second,  in  holding  the  non-mechanical  ideas  to 
their  own  character ;  third,  in  producing  more  of  the 
non-mechanical  sort.  This  is  in  every  way  the  result  of 
such  work  as  Bergson's,  except  for  his  too  physical  idea 
of  idea. 

The  general  name  for  this  process  of  making  connec- 
tions among  ideas  is  reasoning.  We  would  therefore 
agree  with  Bergson  and  others  that  it  is  not  by  reason- 
ing, in  this  sense,  that  reality  is  first  known.  Reason- 
ing, or  thinking,  is  a  process  which  insists  first  on  con- 
nectedness of  ideas ;  is  willing  to  reach  new  territory 
only  from  old,  and  by  approved  truss-work,  in  cantilever 
fashion  :  "  intuition,"  or  immediate  knowledge,  is  capa- 
ble (relatively  speaking)  of  ignoring  connections,  of 
seizing  a  bridge  span  in  mid  air  and  holding  to  it  while 
truss  and  abutments  grow.  But  in  the  one  case  as  in 
the  other  it  is  idea-work  that  we  witness,  —  nothing 
different.  So  of  "  instinct  "  which  is  often  appealed  to 
as  a  more  adequate  organ  than  idea  for  knowing  reality. 
What  is  there  about  reality  which  instinct  can  divine 
while  idea  must  remain  confined  to  its  clear-cut  and 
barren  circles  ?  If  any  real  What,  significant  of  any- 
thing, then  ipso  facto  idea,  though  the  work  of  wooing 
that  idea  into  our  systems  and  reasonings  may  well  be 
the  work  of  ages  and  of  races  of  men. 

It  is  only  in  very  recent  years  that  religion  has  di- 
rectly suffered  from  this  particular  aspect  of  the  distrust 
of  ideas :  for  religion  has,  in  the  main,  been  content  to 
conceive  its  God,  its  world,  its  various  objects  of  dogma, 
as  unchanging — in  view  of  which,  idea  may  be  as  rigid 
as  we  please,  without  detriment.  It  is  only  as  the  ne- 


HOW  IDEAS  OF  IDEAS  MISREPRESENT  THEM       89 

cessity  has  arisen  in  the  speculative  mind  to  recognize 
flux  and  growth  in  everything,  even  in  God  himself,  that 
loyalty  of  idea  to  its  meaning  becomes  felt,  in  religious 
discussion  also,  as  the  idea's  rigidity  and  incompetence. 
Modernism  feels  it ;  such  writers  as  William  James,  and 
in  popular  vein  as  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  complain  of  it  in 
religious  context.  But  a  deeper  and  older  ground  of 
distrust  —  perhaps  at  the  bottom  of  this  very  prejudice 
regarding  rigidity  —  is  the  sense  that  the  idea  is  finite, 
fitted  to  cope  only  with  the  simpler,  poorer,  exhaustible 
phases  of  reality.  To  this  more  fundamental  difficulty 
we  must  now  turn. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  ALLEGED  FINITUDE  OF  IDEAS 

ALL  pictures  of  the  idea  which  we  are  likely  to  frame 
to  ourselves — circles,  coins,  counters,  ocean  water- 
buckets  —  would  agree  in  at  least  this  one  point :  the 
finitude  of  the  idea.  The  essence  of  the  idea  is  known 
contents,  marked  off  from  the  infinite  unknown.  An 
idea  is  a  mental  achievement,  a  success  of  some  sort,  un 
fait  accompli,  a  usable  possession :  whence  that  which 
is  unconquerable  and  unpossessible,  the  infinite,  must 
be  left  outside  the  idea.  Efforts,  indeed,  the  mind  is 
continually  making  to  encompass  gulfs,  seas,  the  ocean 
itself;  or  let  us  say,  to  decoy  limitless  genii  into  stop- 
pered bottles :  and  in  these  enterprises  certain  partial 
successes  seem  always  on  the  eve  of  happening  —  some 
robe  corner  or  perchance  a  toe  of  the  genius  approach- 
ing the  bottle,  actually  in  the  bottle  ;  just  enough  en- 
couragement to  prevent  sanguine  mortals  from  forgoing 
the  quest  of  the  infinite  altogether,  and  yet  no  authen- 
tic triumph.  These  are,  to  speak  most  hopefully,  pro- 
spective ideas  ;  and  do  but  serve  to  show  what  finitude  is 
implied  in  the  achieved  idea.  It  is  clear  enough  what 
bearing  this  finitude  of  idea  may  have  upon  religious 
thought,  which  must  needs  try  to  think  the  Infinite: 
this  bearing  has  been  sufficiently  exhibited  by  all  those 
philosophers  whose  point  of  pride  is  their  humility  and 
candor,  since  Herbert  Spencer,  and  also  before  him. 


THE   ALLEGED   FINITUDE  OF  IDEAS  91 

How  the  religion  of  feeling  is  concerned  in  this  issue 
none  has  shown  so  well  as  Professor  Hoffding.1  Reli- 
gion cannot  reach  its  goal  in  the  form  of  thought,  he 
reasons,  because  religion  must  aspire  to  be  conclusive ; 
whereas  thought,  in  these  matters,  is  necessarily  incon- 
clusive. The  religious  object,  in  order  to  fulfil  the  re- 
quirements of  the  religious  life,  must  possess  finality 
(no  complaint  here  of  the  '  rigidity '  of  ideas),  must 
furnish  "an  absolute  and  objective  conclusion  for  our 
knowledge  "  :  but  no  ideas  in  the  field  of  religion  can 
claim  these  qualities.  However  comprehensive  they 
may  be,  reality  in  its  infinitude  breaks  away  from  them. 
What  satisfaction  in  idea  can  there  be  for  religion  un- 
less, for  example,  we  can  frame  valid  ideas  of  "  God," 
and  of  "  the  world  "  ?  But  this  we  cannot  do.  What 
is  to  be  meant  by  "  the  world  "  but  a  symbol  for  a  com- 
pleted work  of  fact-finding  and  law-finding  brought  to 
perfect  unity?  —  which  work  shows  no  sign  of  being 
finished  till  Doomsday,  and  can  by  no  right  be  treated 
as  done  before  that  time.  Indeed,  the  finding  of  a  prin- 
ciple which  could  unify  the  physical  world-laws  alone 
seems  to  be  inherently  impossible,  involving  endless  re- 
treat of  the  object,  endless  regress,  endless  rainbow 
pursuit.  As  for  the  idea  of  God,  there  is  no  need  to 
question  completion  when  so  much  question  besets  our 
poor  beginnings.  And  were  we  able  to  think  both  God 
and  the  world,  this  would  not  satisfy  the  requirement 
of  religion,  which  (if  it  depends  on  ideas)  must  have 
some  idea  of  the  relation  between  its  God  and  its  world : 
whereas,  any  supposition  we  make,  or  perhaps  that  can 
be  made,  only  plunges  us  into  further  infinities.  Not 

1  Philosophy  of  Religion,  chapter  u. 


92      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

accidental  unfinishedness,  but  inherent  unfinishableness 
of  this  God-and-world-problem,  is  what  we  face.  By 
whatever  concept  we  try  to  compass  finality,  reality 
opens  through  its  wall  an  alley  of  "  infinite  regress," 
and  escapes  —  mocking.  "  All  limiting  concepts  contain 
a  certain  element  of  raillery."  Thus  instructed  by  the 
self-invited  discomfiture  of  the  idea,  does  religion  pass 
(through  analogy  and  symbol)  to  its  secure  seat  in  feel- 
ing, with  its  postulate  of  faith,  —  "  the  conservation  of 
value." 

We  cannot  but  endorse  this  conception  of  religion's 
demand  for  finality  in  its  objects.  Have  we  not  already 
described  religion  as  "  anticipated  attainment ";  reach- 
ing ends  (of  which  the  world-knowing  end  is  one)  for 
which  men  must  otherwise  infinitely  wait.  But  because 
we  accept  that  demand,  we  cannot  despair  of  it ;  nor 
resort  to  feeling  for  a  finality  denied  to  the  idea.  I 
shall  not  by  any  means  attempt  here  to  do  justice  to 
Hoffding's  thought  in  its  deeper  bearings;  I  can  deal 
only  with  the  one  difficulty,  —  the  finitude  of  the  idea, 
the  infinitude  of  the  task  of  knowledge. 

Consider  first,  that  all  ideas  contain  an  infinity,  — 
though  an  uncounted  infinity.  Within  the  contour  of 
the  blank  circle-face  alone  is  there  not  an  infinitude  of 
points? — which  infinitude  does  not  render  less  serene 
our  finished  possession  of  the  circle's  meaning.  In  a  tree, 
there  are  leaves  which  could  be  counted,  also  cells,  atoms, 
infinite  infinitesimals ;  but  my  idea  of  that  tree  does  not 
await  the  result  of  the  counting  and  studying.  Every 
idea,  at  that  instant  in  which  it  is  distinguished  from 
other  meanings  of  the  mind,  is  finished  at  once,  from 
its  inner  end,  its  intention :  at  that  instant  the  universe 


THE  ALLEGED  FINITUDE  OF  IDEAS  93 

is  dichotomized,  even  to  its  borders  (as  a  bill  may  be- 
come law  throughout  a  nation  at  the  stroke  of  the  clock) 
—  though  the  work  of  its  application  be  never  finished, 
or  so  much  as  entered  upon.  No  consideration  of  the 
immensity  of  the  object,  nor  of  the  long  labor  or  im- 
possible labor  of  finished  acquaintance,  can  balk  the  ease 
and  timeless  facility  of  the  idea.  No  one  shall  tell  me 
that  my  ideas  of  Russia,  or  of  physics,  or  of  walrus,  or 
of  my  friend,  are  but  feelings  because  my  ignorance  of 
them  is  measured  only  by  eternal  time :  if  at  the  name 
I  know  to  what  object  that  name  refers,  I  have  a  valid 
idea  of  that  infinite  object.  In  international  affairs,  a 
State  may  be  recognized  and  dealt  with  if  it  has  but  a 
determinate  place  and  foreign  office :  all  else  may  be 
problematic  —  population,  extent,  resource,  even  gov- 
ernment. An  idea  likewise  has  existence  and  standing 
when  it  has  a  determinate  place  in  the  mind,  determin- 
ate external  relations  (distinctions  from  other  ideas) : 
internal  exploration,  development,  spinning  out  of 
treaty  web-work,  may  pursue  its  own  slow  course. 

One  sort  of  completion,  and  one  only,  an  idea  must 
have  —  the  complete  distinction  and  identification  of 
its  interest  (or  of  its  problem) :  it  must  be  an  individ- 
ual interest  in  a  mind-full  of  interests.  One  sort  of  fini- 
tude  it  must  have  and  one  only :  the  finitude  of  not 
being  the  only  idea  in  the  mind,  of  having  a  genuine 
exterior,  a  wholly  mental  exterior,  of  other  interests. 
So  far  as  the  idea's  object  is  concerned,  it  seems  to  me 
doubtful  whether  there  are  any  finite  ideas  at  all. 
Choose  your  idea  of  the  minutest  possible  object,  an 
object  defined  as  being  without  internal  detail,  atom- 
atom  :  this  poorest  idea  in  the  mind  must,  like  other 


94      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

ideas,  be  on  duty  forever,  ready  for  infinite  recurrences 
of  its  object  —  which  possible  infinitude  is  already  part 
of  the  sense  of  the  idea.  So  with  our  ocean  water-bucket, 
which,  though  it  would,  cannot  close  to  itself  the  prospect 
of  endless  other  buckets-full ;  a  vista  involved  in  its  own 
limited  cubic  contents.  So  with  all  other  ideas ;  they 
must  contemplate  an  infinitude  of  application  having 
a  rough  inverse  proportion  to  their  own  internal  poverty. 
Indeed,  I  am  prepared  to  say  that  the  chief  function 
of  an  idea  is  to  serve  as  a  vessel,  or  as  a  center  of 
attachment,  for  infinite  growth  of  knowledge :  that 
any  idea  not  infinitely  capacious,  infinitely  ambitious,  is 
already  a  dead  idea.  To  the  question,  Can  we  think 
the  Infinite?  let  me  propose  the  answer,  We  think 
nothing  else. 

Religious  ideas,  then,  have  nothing  to  fear  from  the 
general  charge  of  infinite  ambition.  But  perhaps  the 
real  occasion  for  the  diffidence  of  the  candid-humble 
philosopher  is  not  so  much  infinite  contents  per  se  as  it 
is  the  special  case  of  infinity  involved  in  totality :  for 
the  religious  idea  (of  God,  or  of  world,  or  of  eternity) 
must  be  in  its  own  way  all-comprehensive.  Ideas  may 
have  an  internal  infinitude,  and  beside  this  an  infinite 
swath  of  application ;  but  all  this  is  as  nothing  to  the 
infinitude  beyond  their  interest :  the  dark  stretching 
expanses  of  reality  left  out  by  all  ideas — not-x  to  all 
of  them. 

In  meeting  this  objection,  it  is  fair  to  notice  that  in 
describing  this  unlighted  region,  not-x  to  every  idea, 
one  has  made  it  or  confessed  it  a  definable  interest,  al- 
ready an  object  of  idea.  Some  marginal  interest  always 


THE   ALLEGED   FINITUDE  OF  IDEAS  95 

goes  to  the  not-x  of  whatever  idea,  —  which  marginal 
interest,  heaping  up  from  all  ideas  on  any  region  which 
is  not-x  to  all  of  them,  must  acquire  much  positive  weight 
in  time.  But  this  observation  hardly  satisfies  the  objector, 
and  ought  not  to  satisfy  him,  —  nor  the  defendant  either : 
for  the  religious  interest  in  the  Whole  is  no  marginal 
interest ;  and  the  supposed  religious  attainment  of  whole- 
knowledge  no  dim  reflected  luminosity.  The  religious 
idea  will  be  as  positive  and  primordial  as  any ;  will  in- 
sist that  it  is  possible  for  idea  to  begin  with  the  Whole, 
as  readily  as  with  any  fragment.  The  real  source  of 
doubt  lies  in  some  unclearness  about  the  way  in  which 
knowledge  grows.  We  must  give  some  attention  to  that. 

It  is  not  a  true  account  of  knowledge  to  say  that  it 
proceeds  (always)  from  the  part  to  the  whole.  The  pro- 
gress of  knowledge  has  rather  more  in  common  with  the 
development  of  a  germ-cell  than  with  the  building  of  a 
brick  wall;  something  of  the  whole  present  and  active 
in  that  cell  from  the  beginning.  But  we  must  always  re- 
ject helpful  metaphors,  inimical  metaphors  unless  we  bun- 
dle them  off  in  time,  and  refer  to  the  idea  itself :  we  may 
draw  a  line  about  a  germ-cell  —  none  about  a  germ- 
thought;  an  idea  of  the  universe  can  never  have  been 
wrapped  up  in  small  compass  for  gradual  unfolding ;  we 
do  not  learn  to  see  space  little  by  little.  The  child's  space 
is  as  great  as  the  man's,  —  namely,  whole-space.  He  who 
comes  into  the  world  at  all  comes  at  once  into  the  pres- 
ence of  the  whole  world.  I  am  introduced  to  a  person, 
not  by  piecemeal,  but  all  at  once,  with  a  positive  im- 
pression and  judgment  contained  in  my  idea  :  not  deny- 
ing that  there  is  much  to  learn  and  correct  through 


96      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

long-growing  acquaintance.  So  of  my  introduction  to 
reality :  in  its  full  infinity  and  wholeness  it  is  now  be- 
fore me  and  has  been  so  from  my  conscious  beginning, 
the  same  from  birth  to  death  —  the  same  space,  the  same 
time,  the  same  natural  order  and  particularity,  the  same 
history  and  social  context,  the  same  God,  too,  if  there  be 
a  god,  the  same  world-laws  or  law,  the  same  conditions 
of  life  and  death,  success  and  failure. 

What  grows  in  knowledge  is  the  under-standing  of 
all  this,  the  internal  complexity  and  detail,  middle-world 
experience  and  thereby  middle-world  ideas,  and  espe- 
cially the  power  to  put  ideas  together.  That  fundamental 
difference  already  noticed  between  having  an  idea  and 
having  it  in  terms  of  other  ideas,  between  knowing  your 
object  and  reasoning  about  it,  is  here  again  in  evidence : 
for  the  great  volume  and  business  of  what  we  call  the 
growth  of  knowledge  is  growth  of  connection,  growth 
of  treaty-making  between  ideas.  (Each  such  new  treaty- 
connection  is  doubtless  itself  a  new  idea  —  as  we  count 
ideas  —  and  brings  with  it  internal  development  of  the 
ideas  thus  newly  related,  but  without  altering  their 
place  in  the  mind,  which  place  is  their  identity).  The 
connecting  of  ideas  goes  on  apace  :  for  our  loquacious, 
marketable  knowledge  is  in  proportion,  not  immediately 
to  our  ideas,  but  to  the  couplings  we  can  make  among 
them,  unions  as  of  subject  and  predicate.  Every  new 
bit  of  experience,  taken  in  idea,  makes  chance  and 
demand  for  new  couplings,  —  couplings,  in  fact,  with 
all  previously  present  ideas :  such  a  process  has  no  end 
—  of  all  possible  couplings  only  a  relative  few  can  be 
effected.  Meanwhile,  knowledge  keeps  getting  smaller 
and  finer,  more  tangled,  more  systematic  all  the  time  : 


THE  ALLEGED  FINITUDE  OF  IDEAS  97 

there  are  more  threads  and  pins  in  the  loom,  more  shut- 
tles in  the  air.  Such  is  the  general  aspect  of  the  growth 
of  knowledge — a  mid-world  growth  as  we  have  said. 
But  with  what  does  all  the  growth  and  weaving  begin? 
In  the  beginning  was  at  least  the  Loom  ;  and  always 
remains,  the  simple-total  frame  of  things.  Huge,  inevit- 
able, abiding  Loom,  loom-motion  and  loom-law :  these, 
we  may  say,  are  given ;  stuff  also  to  weave  with,  and 
withal  the  command  to  weave.  Such  total  world-fact, 
always  present  in  idea,  contains  the  growth  of  know- 
ledge —  is  not  in  its  wholeness  any  mere  final  achieve- 
ment thereof. 

The  whole,  then,  is  knowable :  is  the  one  thing  per- 
manently known.  Any  first  idea  of  any  dawning  con- 
sciousness, whatever  its  stimulus-object,  must  be  at  the 
same  time  idea-of-the-whole,  never  to  forsake  that  con- 
sciousness while  it  remains  such.  But  there  is  no  lack 
of  growth  and  change  in  this  idea.  Once  given  a  whole- 
idea  as  a  positive  possession,  every  addition  to  know- 
ledge must  add  to  it  also  ;  every  change  in  the  intricate 
structure  of  mid-world  knowledge  must  have  some 
answering  effect  upon  it.  Suggestions  about  the  char- 
acter of  the  world  as  a  whole  are  continually  steaming 
up  from  the  general  intellectual  workshop ;  since  every 
idea  that  man  gains  casts  some  reflection  or  other  upon 
that  world.  Every  other  idea,  let  me  say,  is  a  possible 
predicate  for  that  permanent  subject ;  that  is  to  say,  a 
possible  commentary  upon  its  nature  and  character. 

And  men  have  always  been  eager  to  bring  their  new 
knowledges  in  all  fields  into  connection  with  their  whole- 
idea,  framing  new  judgments  about  it.  Thus  the  repu- 


98      RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

tation  of  the  whole  is  always  in  the  making  :  there  is  no 
absolute  stability  in  the  qualities  or  predicates  which 
have  been  attached  to  it  —  as  whether  it  is  just  or 
unjust;  caring  about  men  or  not-caring;  unconscious 
perhaps  or  super-conscious ;  unitary,  or  struggling  for 
unity,  or  a  mere  scene  of  struggle.  In  so  far  as  our 
knowledge  of  the  whole  comes  through  such  judgments 
from  the  progress  of  our  day's-work,  bringing  explicit 
predicates  to  that  whole-idea,  that  knowledge  of  the 
whole  might  well  be  subject  to  greater  contingency  than 
any  other.  And  this  consideration,  I  think,  may  help 
us  to  understand  the  historical  instability  of  religious 
thought.  As  the  growth  of  other  knowledge  falls  into 
tangle,  it  suggests  discordant  predicates  for  the  whole ; 
and  judgments  once  secure  fall  into  doubt,  to  be  set 
up  again  later  with  greater  assurance  and  added  mean- 
ing, or  to  make  room  for  some  truer  judgment.  Intel- 
lectual business  is,  as  we  have  seen,  an  eminently  dust- 
raising  pursuit :  it  seems  at  times  as  if  our  whole-idea, 
which  like  all  permanences  is  non-intrusive,  were  pas- 
sively obliterated  in  the  general  murk;  as  though  we 
might  lose  not  only  the  predicates,  but  the  subject 
as  well. 

Herein,  no  doubt,  lies  the  advantage  of  the  child  in 
religion  :  not  greater  power,  but  a  freer  atmosphere. 
To  some  extent,  intellectual  advance  must  always  involve 
loss  to  religion :  readjustments  within  the  whole-idea 
are  required ;  the  simplicity  and  firmness  of  our  former 
predicates  are  disturbed ;  the  solid  proportions  of  the 
whole-idea  of  childhood  can  with  difficulty,  or  never, 
be  recovered.  One  sees  in  part  why  religion  and  '  in- 
tellect '  are  prone  to  fall  into  contrast.  For  the  reli- 


THE   ALLEGED  FINITUDE  OF  IDEAS  99 

gious  idea  suffers  whatever  genuine  losses  are  involved 
in  all  progress;  and  furthermore  cannot  be  clearly  dis- 
cerned amid  the  bustle  of  scientific  labor  :  it  needs  in  a 
measure  to  be  looked-away-to ;  it  is  best  found  in  the 
pauses  of  the  weaving  process,  a  matter  for  the  most 
part  of  holiday  survey. 

The  whole-idea,  then,  while  ever  present,  has  its 
vicissitudes,  its  fortune  to  make  and  ever  re-make,  its 
frequent  seeming  life  and  death  struggles.  It  is  no 
idle  spectator  of  mental  progress,  but  partaker  of  all 
mind-growth,  mind-revolution.  And  all  this  is  consis- 
tent with,  nay  implies,  the  truth  that  this  same  infinite 
whole-idea  is  that  with  which  every  rational  existence 
begins. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   RETREAT  INTO   SUBJECTIVITY 

IT  needs  still  to  be  explained  what  positive  character 
this  whole-idea  can  have,  if  no  predicate  can  perma- 
nently adhere  to  it.  The  instability  of  any  given  predi- 
cate must  often  appear  as  evidence  that  the  idea  in  ques- 
tion is  impossible:  on  this  account  our  whole-idea  has 
often  been  put  down  as  a  no-idea :  everything,  so  far  as 
idea  can  grasp  it,  being  equivalent  to  nothing.  The 
mystic  has  often  been  charged  with  this  conclusion, 
even  while  he  maintains  as  the  true  mystic  must  that  his 
whole-idea  is  the  most  positive  of  all. 

In  spite  of  the  difficulty  of  fixing  predicates  for  the 
whole,  circumstantial  evidence  does  strongly  discoun- 
tenance the  notion  that  the  idea  is  a  negation,  or  a  pure 
problem :  for  hardly  would  such  persistent  ferment  and 
vicissitude  center  about  it,  if  there  were  no  positive 
individual  interest  and  content  at  stake.  The  most 
striking  circumstance  in  the  history  of  this  idea  is  not,  I 
think,  that  all  predicates  have  been  beaten  back ;  but 
that  in  spite  of  all  difficulties  the  assault  continues, 
unremitting,  through  all  mental  eras.  And  if  it  were 
true  ( as  it  is  not )  that  in  this  persistent  attempt  to  cap- 
ture the  whole  in  predicate-idea  no  single  predicate  had 
gained  permanent  hold  —  all  of  them  struck  down  by 
Something — we  should  still  judge  this  fact  the  poorest 
possible  evidence  of  Nothing  There  !  When  we  reject 


THE   RETREAT  INTO  SUBJECTIVITY  101 

a  predicate,  it  is  because  we  know,  better  than  this  pred- 
icate can  say,  what  the  character  of  our  world  is. 

The  principle  here  chiefly  concerned  is  this  :  that  the 
denial  of  any  predicate  does  not  leave  behind  no-predi- 
cate ;  a  simple  enough  principle,  but  much  hindered  by 
mechanical  ideas  of  ideas  —  for  the  erasure  of  a  circle 
does  certainly  leave  behind  precisely  no-circle  in  its 
place.  If  however  I  deny  an  idea,  I  leave  behind  end- 
less possibilities,  or  even  responsibilities,  some  of  which 
are  very  near  to  the  negated  idea  itself.  For  instance, 
I  deny  that  potatoes  are  red  or  that  the  Earth  is  a 
sphere :  yet  these  denials  leave  possible  much  redness  in 
potatoes  and  much  roundness  in  the  Earth's  shape.  So 
when  discordant  opinions  cancel  each  other,  what  is  left 
is  no  mere  feeling,  but  some  very  real  idea,  if  we  can  but 
name  it.  Neither  the  whole-idea  nor  any  other  is  at 
first  quality-less,  getting  its  character  by  the  attach- 
ment of  predicate  after  predicate  from  without :  a  new 
predicate  does  no  more  than  express  what  was  and  has 
been  true  of  the  subject,  not  hitherto  say-able,  but 
needing  and  requiring  to  be  said.  The  retreat  into 
subjectivity  (for  that  is  what  the  feeling-resort  is) 
means  an  abandonment  of  the  effort  and  responsibility 
of  naming  the  idea  that  is  tenable,  letting  subject  as 
well  as  predicate  sink  beneath  the  threshold  waters  of 
conscious  existence. 

A  rough  parallel  may  show  this  :  religious  opinions  dif- 
fer from  age  to  age  and  from  people  to  people  hardly 
more  than  do  the  foods  of  these  same  ages  and  peoples. 
Have  we  then  any  positive,  objective,  food-idea  —  since 
scarcely  anything  used  in  one  place  would  not  be  re- 
jected in  some  other? — shall  we  not  say  that  the  real 


102     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

meaning  of  food  is  a  feeling  of  some  sort,  say  of 
hunger  and  the  relief  thereof  ?  Doubtless  this  feeling- 
sequence  is  a  constant  amid  all  the  variations  of  menu, 
and  enters  into  the  meaning  of  the  term ;  but  there  is 
another  constant,  amid  all  the  varieties  of  foods,  —  and 
that  is  food — physical,  eatable,  digestible  object-matter, 
as  well  as  subject-matter.  Behind  every  such  diversity 
of  idea,  there  is  an  identity  of  feeling  (which  it  is  well 
to  note) ;  but  also  —  an  identity  of  Idea.  Men  may 
lose  their  gods,  and  have  God  left.  Behind  Indra  and 
his  drivers  is  Prajapati ;  and  behind  Prajapati,  there 
is  Brahm. 

It  is  fair  to  observe,  also,  that  the  displacement  of  old 
predicates  by  new  (admittedly  an  infinite  process,  in  the 
case  of  our  whole-idea,  or  of  our  God-idea)  does  not  im- 
ply the  essential  falsity  of  the  old.  There  are  among 
predicates  no  precise  fittings  of  any  subject,  nor  yet 
precise  mis-fittings  (if  a  predicate  wholly  coincides 
with  its  subject,  it  ceases  to  be  a  garment  therefor) : 
what  is  fit  depends  upon  what  is  required.  My  predi- 
cates hurled  at  Deity  and  the  World  are  like  broad  mis- 
siles that  hit  the  mark  —  and  more  :  as  my  marksman- 
ship becomes  finer  I  may  adopt  finer  weapons,  substitute 
arrows  for  clubs  and  stones,  but  still  hit  only  the  same 
mark.  I  cannot  accuse  my  stone-and-club-throwing 
successes  of  substantial  error,  but  only  of  rudeness,  of 
anachronism  if  persisted  in.  Arrows  too  must  be  dis- 
placed— in  time  perhaps  by  light-rays:  yet  each,  in 
its  own  way,  may  strike  true.  Nothing  in  all  this  diffi- 
culty of  predicates  then  (even  if  it  were,  which  it  is 
not,  a  pure  chaos),  need  justify  the  abandonment  of  the 
whole-idea  as  a  no-idea,  at  most  a  feeling. 


THE  RETREAT  INTO   SUBJECTIVITY  103 

It  is  not  our  present  purpose  to  say  what  we  know 
about  the  World  or  about  God  ;  we  are  enquiring  only 
whether  such  knowledge  is  possible,  and  how  it  is  possi- 
ble. So  far  as  explicit  predicates  of  the  whole  are  con- 
cerned, our  answer  may  now  be  put  in  this  way :  If 
there  are  any  permanent  achievements  of  knowledge  in 
any  direction,  in  the  progress  of  science  and  the  Arts, 
every  such  achievement  may  be  the  basis  of  an  equally 
stable  judgment  about  the  whole.  At  one  time,  we  were 
questioning  whether  the  emergence  of  the  Arts  were 
not  the  silencing  of  religion  :  we  may  now  see  that  it  is 
the  emergence  of  the  Arts  that  chiefly  aids,  and  even 
compels,  religion  to  become  vocal.  When  the  Arts  had 
no  language,  religion  herself  was  necessarily  helpless, 
un-literal,  speaking  the  speech  of  myth  and  figure,  lack- 
ing fixed  objective  moorings.  The  question  of  truth 
in  religion  did  not  arise,  and  could  not  consciously  arise, 
until  there  had  come  into  the  world  an  independent 
science,  philosophy,  art,  and  artisanry.  Now  that  these 
have  made  good  their  independent  faculties,  they  lend 
to  religion  their  new-made  powers:  religion  becomes 
articulate  in  the  same  measure  in  which  she  gives  artic- 
ulateness  to  the  world. 

We  have,  then,  a  growing  body  of  positive  know- 
ledge about  the  whole,  as  well  as  a  permanent  whole- 
idea  as  subject  of  these  judgments.  But  it  remains  true 
that  all  knowledge  of  the  whole  is  of  the  simplest  order. 
In  the  presence  of  the  ultimate  we  shall  always  remain 
primitive :  we  can  never  become  civilized  in  respect  to 
God.  All  our  accounts  of  the  larger  realities  fall  back 
in  language  to  the  elements  of  speech,  the  rudiments  of 


104    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

numbers,  the  conceptions  of  infantile  mechanics.1  Child- 
hood lies  always  within  our  reach,  as  we  pass  outward 
from  the  world  in  which  we  move  with  skill  (because 
we  have  set  up  in  it  the  stage  and  reaction-board  suited 
to  meet  our  powers)  into  the  field  of  the  larger  interests 
of  the  cosmos.  It  is  because  of  this  necessary  simplicity, 
and  not  because  the  type  of  hold  we  have  on  these  larger 
interests  is  not  a  grip  of  idea,  that  -we  bow  our  minds 
in  well-considered  humility  as  we  approach  the  infinite, 
that  religion  belies  itself  when  it  expands  in  verbiage. 
For  speech,  at  its  best,  is  only  partial  wisdom ;  whereas 
the  wisdom  of  religion  is  entire. 

But  as  for  this  other  humility  — that  of  the  candid, 
humble  philosopher,  who  will  have  no  idea  of  the  infi- 
nite, especially  of  the  Total-infinite  • —  that  is,  in  truth, 
the  poorest  virtue  in  the  catalogue.  A  labor-saving  vir- 
tue, I  fear :  also  at  times,  sadly  enough,  a  guilty  virtue, 
parting  too  readily  with  its  birthright.  Such  a  thing 
there  is  as  impatience  in  knowledge,  also  presumption ; 
not  to  be  cured  however  by  renouncing  courage,  effort, 
and  withal  the  capital-possession  of  humanity — the  idea 
which  with  simplicity  embraces  and  knows  the  infinite. 
Every  living  infinite-total,  and  not  the  world  only,  has 
for  knowledge  this  same  unitary-simplicity ;  the  Person, 
Nature,  Society,  History,  the  State :  the  knowledge  of 
these,  open  to  the  "poor  in  spirit,"  is  the  justification 
of  democracy,  of  modern  life  at  large.  We  are  not 
human  until  we  claim  and  use  these  ideas-infinite,  the 
essential  organs  of  a  genuine  personal  life. 

1  We  may  notice  a  similar  thing  in  all  the  maxima  of  life  —  say  in 
world-politics,  whose  "  depths  and  intricacies  "  are  chiefly  the  mysteries  of 
closed  doors,  whose  "  complex  principles  "  chiefly  the  abstruse  policies  of 
boys  and  savages. 


THE  RETREAT  INTO   SUBJECTIVITY  106 

It  remains  true  also  —  and  what  we  have  been  saying 
will  help  to  explain  the  fact  —  that  religious  knowledge, 
of  the  kind  with  which  revelation  and  prophecy  are  con- 
cerned, is  not  commonly  found  in  the  course  of  theoret- 
ical reflection.  That  which  so  profoundly  stirs  feeling 
has  been  in  its  psychological  origin  a  product  of  some- 
thing very  like  feeling,  and  very  different  from  common 
thought.  Abeyance  of  ingenuity,  a  fostered  passivity, 
reliance  upon  the  primitive  in  the  mind,  the  coopera- 
tion of  what  psychology  prefers  to  call  the  subconscious 
and  instinctive :  all  such  non-thinking  has  been  requisite 
for  winning  truth  about  super-nature.  To  retire  into 
the  wilderness  for  forty  days,  to  make  yourself  pure  and 
empty,  to  throw  off  your  skill  and  your  shrewdness,  to 
forget  the  proportions  of  men  and  of  men's  outlooks : 
these  have  been  found  fit  preparations  for  the  reception 
of  prophecy.  But  let  us  be  clear  that  this  negation  of 
common  thought-activity,  the  intense  passion  and  sub- 
jectivity of  religion  thus  shown,  is  but  a  measure  of  the 
immense  scope  of  its  intention.  The  most  inner  is  called 
on  only  to  reach  the  most  outer.  The  bow-string  is 
pulled  in  to  its  limit  only  that  the  shaft  may  also  reach 
its  limit. 

Religious  wisdom  impresses  us  as  an  affair  for  the 
subconscious  subject  because  it  stirs  subconscious 
depths :  an  impression  which  the  psychological  attitude 
can  hardly  shake  off;  yet  the  inference  is  exactly 
topsy-turvy. 

Nothing  can  stir  the  "  depths  "  of  mind,  but  total  out- 
of-doors.  We  call  "  depth,"  last  dregs,  etc.,  that  in  man 
which  only  ultimate  facts  and  happenings  can  interest ; 
that  which  the  near  and  usual  can  neither  rouse  nor 


106    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

ruffle.  Somewhere  in  each  man,  we  imagine,  there  lies 
an  ultimatum,  to  be  backed  by  all  his  energies  from  all 
reservoirs,  ordinary  and  extraordinary,  —  what  can  elicit 
from  any  man  such  ultimatum  and  ultimatum-backing  ? 
—  nothing  that  has  not  somewhere  in  it  the  word 
All!  There  are  such  things,  we  think,  as  ruling  pas- 
sions, "  deepest  desires,"  in  any  man  some  nameable  or 
unnameable  last  ambition  —  what  can  set  such  a  depth 
on  fire?  —  nothing  but  some  total  opportunity  (real 
or  believed  real),  discovered  in  the  wide  world 
beyond  the  self. 

Drama,  dreaming  likewise,  can  detach  itself  at  once 
from  reality  and  power  of  excitement :  but  objectivity  is 
the  very  food  of  passion.  Passion  necessarily  realizes  ; 
apart  from  some  experience  of  passion  one  hardly  knows 
what/ac£  is. 

Keligious  passion,  at  length,  is  the  best  illustration 
of  all  this:  for  this  is  the  mark  of  religious  passion, 
that  a  specific  view  of  the  whole  makes  conscious  con- 
nection with  one's  practical  ultimata.  The  "deepest 
of  all  inborn  impulses,"  says  Professor  Pratt,1  "  is  the 
'  instinct  for  self-preservation ' "  :  and  what  is  to  set  t hat 
impulse  trembling?  —  "  a  belief  in  the  impossibility  of 
real  annihilation."  Belief  founded  on  what? — founded 
back  on  the  instinct  itself  ?  —  doomed  then  to  death 
and  silence.  Founded  on  vision  perhaps  ?  If  ever  upon 
the  stupid  day-length  time-span  of  any  self,  or  saint 
either,  some  vision  breaks  to  roll  his  life  and  ours  into 
new  channels,  it  can  only  be  because  that  vision  admits 
into  his  soul  some  trooping  invasion  of  the  concrete 
fulness  of  eternity.  Such  vision  doubtless  means  sub- 

1  Psychology  of  Religious  Belief,  p.  292. 


THE  RETREAT  INTO   SUBJECTIVITY  107 

conscious  readiness,  and  subconscious  resonance  too, — 
but  the  expansion  of  unused  air-cells  does  not  argue 
that  we  have  ceased  now  to  breathe  the  outer  air :  — 
the  very  opposite ! 

No.  The  so-called  wisdom  of  feeling  is  of  the  same 
stuff  and  substance  with  other  wisdom,  positive,  objective, 
belonging  to  our  world  of  ideas.  The  religious  vista  is 
large  and  open  :  in  integral  continuity  with  the  field-lines 
of  our  overt  existence  (not  narrowly  caught  by  peering 
up  back-chimney-flues  of  consciousness).  Whatever  is 
thus  continuous  with  the  real  known  in  idea  is  itself 
known  in  idea,  — not  otherwise.  There  are  vague  ideas, 
and  unfinished  ideas,  uncertain  predicates,  qualities  only 
dimly  divined  —  known  most  certainly  by  their  differ- 
ence from  others,  their  negative  bearing  —  but  none  of 
this  haze  and  floating  outline  affects  the  intent  and  cate- 
gory of  the  scene-contents.  Whatever  is,  or  can  be, 
predicate  of  idea  is  itself  idea-stuff,  whether  or  not  yet 
successfully  defined  and  connected. 

We  have  dwelt  long  on  the  question  of  the  idea's  de- 
fects, the  most  persuasive  of  the  supports  of  the  religion 
of  feeling.  For  some  touch  of  finitude  must  cleave  to 
all  things  human :  and  none  of  our  ideas,  religious  or 
other,  can  be  more  than  the  idea  of  some  poor  mortal. 
Yet,  we  do  here  claim  that  the  ideas  of  mortals  may  en- 
tertain the  infinite  and  the  total  as  their  valid  objects,  and 
do  always  entertain  them,  though  unawares.  Whoever 
says  that  the  foundations  of  religion  lie  deeper  than  idea 
speaks  true :  deeper,  indeed,  they  lie  than  the  current 
idea-level;  deeper  than  most  of  our  predicates,  taken  as 
these  are  chiefly  from  the  sphere  of  the  day's  work. 


108     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

The  result  we  have  reached  is  simply  that  deeper  than 
idea  is  Idea.  There  is  nothing  of  reality,  whether  the 
infinitude  of  its  livingness  and  change,  or  the  infinitude 
of  its  extent,  to  which  we  must  be  related  through  feel- 
ing because  of  the  incapacity  of  idea.  Ketreat  to  the 
inner  man  (retreat  for  which  idealism  has  itself  set  the 
example)  is  not  imposed  upon  us  by  any  yet-mentioned 
defects  of  our  organs  of  knowledge  or,  let  me  say,  is  not 
permitted  to  us :  driven  back  from  any  stated  idea,  we 
must  still  remain  in  the  idea-world. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  IDEA-WORLD  IN  ITS  AIM  TOWARD  FREEDOM 
FROM   FEELING 

ASSUME,  then,  that  we  have  overcome  the  most  seri- 
ous and  actual  of  the  obstacles  to  our  confidence 
in  the  possibility  of  knowledge  in  religion.  Let  us  agree 
that  religious  feeling,  in  its  necessary  effort  to  win  a 
theory  of  its  own  meaning,  is  not  inevitably  balked  by  the 
incompetence  of  our  organs  of  knowledge,  the  ideas.  If 
we  can  accept  this  as  a  definite  result,  though  wholly  gen- 
eral and  preliminary,  we  have  dealt  with  one  half  of  the 
problem  which  the  religion  of  feeling  puts  before  us.  An- 
other half  remains  :  for  while  we  must  try  to  work  out  a 
religious  theory  and  have  good  hope  of  success,  it  may 
still  be  true  that  the  vitality  of  religion  lies  in  the  feel- 
ing and  not  in  the  idea.  As  long  as  our  ideas  retain 
their  living  connection  with  the  feelings  which  they  are 
naturally  meant  to  guide,  they  are  sound :  but  idea  has 
a  way  of  severing  that  connection  and  setting  up  as  a 
thing  separate  and  sufficient  in  itself.  We  have  ourselves 
asserted  that  feeling  tends  to  vanish  as  idea  becomes 
more  adequate:  and  yet  it  is  certain  that  religion  with- 
out feeling  is  nothing.  All  feeling  needs  idea;  but  it 
does  not  follow  that  all  idea  needs  feeling  or  can  win  it : 
in  fixing  attention  upon  the  idea,  we  are  in  danger  of 
detaching  ourselves  from  the  sources  of  life. 

It  is  idle  to  deny  that  he  impoverishes  himself  who 


110    RELIGIOUS  FEELING   AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

tries  to  live  by  idea  alone.  What  we  have  to  do  is  to 
study  this  evident  tendency  of  idea  to  separate  from 
feeling  and  become  external.  We  cannot  doubt  the 
tendency,  though  we  may  doubt  whether  it  is  the  last 
word  in  regard  to  their  relations.  The  union  between 
idea  and  feeling  seems  to  me  to  be  organic,  not  acci- 
dental or  external,  so  that  idea  in  the  last  resort  can  no 
more  free  itself  from  feeling  than  feeling  can  free  itself 
from  idea.  But  whatever  may  be  the  nature  of  this 
union,  it  is  not  to  be  found  by  minimizing  the  fact  that 
the  world  of  ideas  does  aspire  to  be  independent  of  the 
current  flux  of  feelings.  We  must  rather  give  full  scope 
and  credit  to  this  aim,  and  think  it  through  to  its  con- 
clusions. What,  then,  we  first  ask,  seems  to  be  the 
nature  of  that  ideal  of  independence? 

In  the  first  place  an  idea  must  be  permanent,  whereas 
feeling  is  essentially  transient.  An  idea  may  guide  a 
feeling  to  its  goal  and  its  cessation ;  but  as  the  experi- 
ence passes,  the  idea  does  not  cease  to  exist,  —  as  for 
example  the  idea  of  food  when  I  am  not  hungry.  On 
the  contrary,  it  seems  now  to  begin  its  most  character- 
istic existence  as  idea. 

For  the  more  common  uses  of  the  idea,  in  memory, 
in  reflection,  in  communication,  are  best  fulfilled  when 
the  idea  can  be  referred  to  without  unnecessary  stirring 
of  subjective  interests  and  emotions.  We  want  our  ideas 
to  be  so  held  in  the  mind  that  any  vital  connection  with 
feeling  must  come  as  an  additional  fact.  We  want  them 
so  far  insulated  from  ourselves  that  whatever  their  mo- 
mentary importance  may  be  or  become,  we  must  first 
make  an  application  to  our  own  case  by  a  separate  act 


IDEA  SEEKING  FREEDOM  FROM  FEELING          111 

of  inference.  Picture  me  a  destroyed  San  Francisco  : 
this  is  a  fact  distantly  regrettable,  but  still  a  mere  fact : 
but  remind  me  now  that  I  have  friends  there,  or  invest- 
ments, and  immediately  the  bond  with  feeling  is  accom- 
plished. Apart  from  such  separate  act  of  application  the 
idea  exists  in  its  normal  freedom,  fit  to  be  dealt  with  in 
what  we  call  the  purely  theoretical  manner,  the  charac- 
teristic life  of  the  idea. 

In  this  theoretical  condition  any  idea  of  mine  finds 
itself  in  a  permanent  and  fairly  complete  world  of  ideas. 
This  idea-world  at  any  moment  must  contain  the  idea- 
concerns  for  all  possible  feelings,  past  and  future — not 
merely  for  those  accidentally  present ;  and  even  to  some 
extent  for  all  mankind,  not  for  myself  alone,  in  so  far 
as  I  undertake  to  understand  the  feelings  of  all  man- 
kind through  my  own  magazine  of  ideas.  Only  a  few  of 
these  ideas  can  be  in  use  at  any  time;  for  feeling  is 
nothing  unless  present  feeling ;  hence  for  the  most  part 
one's  idea-world  stands  undisturbed  by  feeling,  a  liberal 
and  adequate  field  for  free  conscious  existence.  Were 
it  not  possible  to  lift  the  eyes  from  the  movement  of 
affairs  in  course  to  other  idea-regions  without  at  once 
experiencing  the  full  feeling-effect  of  these  ideas,  human 
life  could  scarcely  move  in  any  such  roomy  spiritual 
place  as  it  now  possesses.  The  permanent  and  instant 
command  of  our  whole-view  is  perhaps  the  distinguish- 
ing mark  of  our  species.  Whatever  independence  of 
feeling  is  implied  in  this  undisturbed  access  to  every 
idea-meaning  is  the  clear  tendency  and  purpose  of  the 
idea-world,  and  to  a  great  extent  an  already  accom- 
plished fact. 

And  further,  whatever  we  can  call  a  spiritual  posses- 


112    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

sion  has  its  place  here.  For  surely  we  should  give  reli- 
gion, or  any  other  human  interest,  both  ampler  and 
firmer  terrain  by  establishing  it  in  this  permanent  idea- 
world  than  if  we  could  find  for  it,  so  to  speak,  only  a 
sea-faring  life  on  the  incessantly  shifting  surface  of 
feeling.  Whatever  is  to  be  established  in  this  world 
must  be  established  in  idea,  for  only  the  idea  admits 
of  establishment. 

And  now,  in  the  second  place,  this  free  theoretical 
status  of  the  idea  in  memory  and  reflection  becomes  an 
ideal  even  for  the  use  of  the  idea  in  concrete  cognitive 
experience,  in  so  far  as  this  too  has  a  theoretical  aim. 
We  are  sufficiently  familiar  with  the  way  in  which  feel- 
ing interferes  with  this  work,  mars  the  equanimity  of  its 
operation,  and  warps  its  results.  This  work  must  be 
done  in  a  certain  equilibrium  of  mind,  an  equilibrium 
whose  difficulty  is  itself  a  testimony  to  the  strong  natu- 
ral bond  between  idea  and  feeling.  But  this  equilibrium 
is  possible,  at  least  as  an  ideal,  and  it  is  this  ideal  that 
now  concerns  us.  Through  the  need  to  be  anti-emotional, 
the  attitude  which  we  call  the  empirical  attitude  takes 
on  a  definite  moral  aspect.  What  we  will  to  know  is 
reality,  and  reality  is  a  word  having  the  force  of  feel- 
ing-rebuke—  "  stern  reality  "  is  its  name. 

Thus,  in  sum,  our  ideas  have  many  other  uses  than 
those  of  the  immediate  guidance  of  present  feelings ; 
and  for  all  these  other  uses  a  freedom  from  feeling- 
entanglements  is  as  desirable  as  in  its  own  place  a  ready 
union  with  feeling  is  desirable.  There  is  a  liberality 
about  idea  which  does  not  comport  with  its  being  always 
in  harness  to  feeling;  and  the  idea  cannot  be  identified 
with  a  relation  which  now  appears  to  be  but  a  special 


IDEA  SEEKING  FREEDOM  FROM   FEELING          113 

and  occasional  relation.  The  idea  is  normally  independ- 
ent of  the  flux  of  feelings.  But  has  not  this  independ- 
ence some  further  and  more  general  relation  to  feeling  ? 

There  is  no  doubt  that  it  has  a  further  account  to 
give.  This  power  to  hold  our  ideas  in  theoretical  equi- 
librium is  no  mechanical  matter ;  it  is  a  hard-won 
accomplishment,  and  it  becomes  marked  only  in  the 
higher  stages  of  evolution  and  of  culture.  It  is  an  ac- 
quisition of  much  importance,  having  a  decided  biologi- 
cal value  as  well  as  the  general  spiritual  interest  which 
we  have  suggested.  This  status  of  the  idea  is  thus  itself 
a  matter  in  which  our  feelings  must  be  in  some  way 
deeply  involved.  Very  likely  the  apparently  independent 
idea  is  but  a  pseudo-independent  idea ;  a  highly  explic- 
able, and  even  copiously  explained,  product  of  evolution. 

There  is  certainly  little  agreement  at  present  as  to 
the  exact  sequence  and  description  of  the  stages  of  men- 
tal evolution ;  but  there  is  some  approach  to  agreement 
in  the  opinion  that  the  theoretical  use  of  idea  is  a  com- 
paratively late  invention  of  nature's  and  a  thoroughly 
practical  and  instrumental  affair.  Primitive  idea-making 
is  seemingly  most  un-theoretical ;  and  developed  idea- 
making  is  at  bottom  the  same,  though  under  high  dis- 
guise. There  is  a  well-known  theory  to  the  effect  that 
all  ideas,  in  the  last  resort,  mean  some  action  or  plan 
of  action;  so  that  in  their  very  meanings  they  are  bound 
up  with  the  feelings  which  normally  announce  and  ac- 
company those  actions.  Through  whatever  remote  and 
devious  paths  the  idea  in  question  finds  its  way  into 
practice,  its  whole  significance  can  be  reduced  to  the 
difference  in  conduct  which  belief  in  its  object  tends  to 


114    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

provoke.  Idea  means  action  or  purpose.  This  we  may 
call  the  action-theory  of  idea.  In  this  theory  I  do  not 
find  any  complete  satisfaction  ;  yet  it  moves  so  far  in  the 
right  direction,  in  bringing  the  theoretical  idea  into 
relation  with  feeling,  that  it  will  be  well  to  follow  its  path 
and  define  our  own  belief  with  reference  to  it.  Let  me 
then  bring  to  mind  a  typical  sketch  of  the  evolution  of 
the  apparently  feeling-free  idea,  as  interpreted  by  this 
action-theory. 

When  the  world  may  be  simply  classified  for  any  or- 
ganism into  the  eatable  and  the  non-eatable,  the  terri- 
ble and  the  non-terrible,  idea  directly  means  action,  and 
idea-difference  means  action-difference.  Development, 
which  means  at  each  stage  dealing  with  a  bigger  world, 
must  bring  into  view  objects  whose  bearing  on  action 
is  more  and  more  indirect  and  distant,  as  follows : 

First,  we  must  acquire  ideas  of  ways  and  means,  not 
of  ends  only.  Before  we  can  eat  we  must  chase,  and 
long  series  of  signs  and  way-marks  must  be  added  to 
our  idea-stock  —  all  practical  enough,  but  without  orig- 
inal interest  in  themselves. 

Then  it  appears  that  some  things  are  means  to  more 
than  one  end.  The  same  path  leads  home,  and  also  leads 
to  water ;  the  same  water  may  be  source  of  food  supply 
and  drink  supply.  In  such  ideas  the  various  suggestions 
of  action  tend  to  cancel  or  inhibit  each  other.  Many- 
purposes  may  seem  to  the  mind  much  the  same  as  no- 
purpose  :  here  begins  the  apparently  action-free  idea. 
Of  this  sort  are  most  of  our  present  stock  of  substan- 
tive ideas,  because  nothing  concrete  has  its  value  all  in 
one  direction.  And  further,  in  all  real  objects,  as  in  all 
real  men,  there  is  a  mixture  of  benefit  and  injury.  The 


IDEA  SEEKING  FREEDOM   FROM  FEELING          115 

action-value  of  any  concrete  object  taken  by  itself  is 
Dearly  neutral,  a  grey  in  which  all  colors  mix. 

My  world  extends  in  time  and  not  in  space  only:  and 
as  memory  and  prudence  accompany  the  widening  of 
my  world  in  its  time-extent,  I  interest  myself  in  possi- 
ble values,  and  not  alone  in  actual  values.  Every  con- 
crete thing,  under  such  a  broadened  area  of  purpose, 
has  a  speculative  importance.  Thus  arises  the  idea  of  a 
thing,  the  most  finished  achievement  of  our  assumed 
attitude  of  indifference.  The  thing  has  no  defined  sug- 
gestions of  action  ;  its  reputation  is  all  to  be  made ;  our 
value-judgment  is  perfectly  reserved;  we  have  become, 
to  all  appearances,  purely  theoretical. 

Two  new  emotions,  caution  and  curiosity,  mark  the 
upper  reaches  of  this  development;  indeed,  they  are 
probably  provided  by  nature  fairly  early,  but  come  to 
flower  late  in  that  feeling  which  is  sometimes  called  the 
love  of  knowledge,  which  interests  itself  in  things  osten- 
sibly for  no  other  reason  than  that  they  exist.  But  this 
love  of  knowledge,  like  all  preceding  stages  of  recession 
from  the  immediately  useful,  is  still  practical ;  it  is  best 
regarded,  perhaps,  as  a  form  of  the  love  of  power,  which 
in  acquiring  new  data  feels  a  diffused  delight  hailing 
remotely  from  the  sense  of  possible  action. 

"  Dispassionate  investigation  "  is  an  office  created  by 
this  practical  curiosity.  It  is  the  best  value-policy  to 
treat  our  world  as  if  we  were  interested  in  it  for  its  own 
sake.  But  dramatic  self-sacrifice  like  this  does  not  con- 
ceal the  fundamental  relation  of  all  meanings  to  feel- 
ings. Is  it  not  a  commonplace  of  experimental  psychol- 
ogy that  action-shadows  and  fringes  attend  all  ideas  at 
all  times ;  are  there  not  incipient,  tell-tale  muscular 


116     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

movements  always  to  be  discovered  accompanying  all 
thinking-movements,  inhibited,  but  none  the  less  verifi- 
able? Supporting  the  proposal  that  some  motor-outray- 
ing  is  the  essential  meaning  of  every  idea. 

Theoretic  use  of  idea,  then,  is  a  use  in  which  we  say 
to  the  idea,  in  effect,  "Action-meaning — yes,  but  not 
now.'9  And  in  this  power  of  restraint  or  inhibition  we 
are  mightily  aided  by  a  growing  social  experience,  which 
lends  much  practical  significance  to  the  attitude,  "Ac- 
tion-meaning— yes,  but  not  mine."  Society  imposes 
upon  me  the  habit  of  regarding  actions  through  the  eyes 
and  muscles  of  others :  I  learn  to  regard  objects  irre- 
sponsibly, as  one  reads  the  newspaper.  There  is  much 
that  excites  action-impulse,  —  but  it  is  not  my  affair,  and 
I  check  myself.  The  unrnoving  idea,  the  idea  regarded 
theoretically,  is  simply  in  a  socialized  condition :  it  is  set 
over  into  the  world  of  an  actor  who  is,  in  thought,  some 
one  else,  any  one  else  than  myself. 

Thus  we  understand  how,  on  purely  practical  consid- 
erations, it  comes  about  that  we  have  a  pseudo-independ- 
ent world  of  ideas.  Feeling  does  not  markedly  accom- 
pany a  thought  except  in  so  far  as  that  thought  touches 
the  springs  of  my  own  musculature :  feeling  is  the  idea 
doing  work  in  me.  By  whatever  policy  I  can  prevent 
this  motor-connection  from  being  made,  I  add  to  my 
power  over  the  theoretic  idea.  But  in  all  such  theoretic 
status,  we  have  to  recognize  at  bottom  the  fundamental 
action-meaning  held  in  abeyance,  and  fora  limited  dura- 
tion. All  theory  is  sustained  throughout  by  a  powerful 
current  of  feeling,  the  interest  in  possible  action  :  and  any 
one  active  impulse  is  prevented  from  displaying  itself 
only  by  other  impulses  which  for  the  time  rule  my  assent- 


IDEA  SEEKING  FREEDOM  FROM   FEELING          117 

Tliis  is  a  crude  and  over-simple  account  of  the  action- 
theory  of  idea-meaning,  such  as  I  will  attribute  to  no 
one  thinker.  For  our  purposes  it  sufficiently  represents 
the  view  in  question. 

Suggestive  of  much  truth  is  this  evolutionary  pic- 
ture; showing  the  existence  of  some  close  bond  between 
all  idea  and  all  action :  yet  not  on  the  whole  a  just  picture. 
It  seems  to  reduce  the  idea  everywhere  to  the  service 
of  action :  but  in  all  justice  it  only  shows  the  idea  in 
its  struggle  for  independence  hampered  at  the  edges 
by  the  persistent  fringes  of  action.  The  rightful  infer- 
ence, I  venture  to  say,  from  such  evolution-tracing  must 
show  idea  connected  with  feeling  universally  indeed  — 
but  still  externally,  as  to  something  intrinsically  differ- 
ent. Idea,  we  find,  is  always  accompanied  by  feeling: 
will  have  various  feeling-promptings,  hints  of  valuable 
action,  associated  with  it  —  by  way  of  annex ;  but  still 
always  as  additional  and  extraneous  fact.  Every  idea- 
object  must  indeed  have  some  appeal  to  the  imagina- 
tion, its  vividness  depending  largely  on  these  communi- 
cating rills  of  value-fancy,  more  or  less  overt.  But  the 
idea-meaning  remains  that-upon-ivhich  these  value-fan- 
cies turn,  that-from-which  these  action-vistas  open  out  : 
is  itself  something  else  than  these  fringe-leadings ;  can- 
not by  any  evidence  so  far  brought  forward  be  identi- 
fied with  them,  as  value-meaning  or  action-meaning. 

From  the  beginning,  our  ideas  give  cues  to  action,  but 
they  give,  it  seems,  always  somewhat  more  than  the  cue : 
and  in  this  somewhat-more  they  seek  to  lodge  their 
meaning —  not  in  the  accompanying  cue  to  action.  Thus 
the  idea  of  wine  carries  with  it  very  definite  suggestion 


118    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

of  action  —  wine  is  something  to  be  drunk  :  yet  wine 
cannot  be  so  defined  and  identified.  Wine  must  be  de- 
fined, officially  and  otherwise,  by  its  relation  to  the  grape, 
ultimately  by  its  root  in  nature :  apart  from  this  particu- 
lar source  in  nature  wine  is  not  wine,  though  perfectly 
imitating  all  possible  wine-feelings  and  wine-reactions. 
To  lodge  meanings  somewhere  in  Nature  seems  to  guar- 
antee their  genuineness  ;  as  if  all  meanings  must  be 
made  to  touch  base  in  a  region  of  indifference  before 
they  may  spin  lawful  alliances  with  feeling  and  action. 

Nature  is  the  typical  region  for  the  feeling-free 
anchorage  of  the  meanings  of  ideas.  But  this  region  of 
indifference  can  be  more  generally  described.  If  we 
have  to  make  a  distinction  between  ideas  (as  of  wine  from 
vinegar,  friend  from  foe)  we  can  do  this  only  by  mak- 
ing, or  having,  an  idea  of  the  common  ground  which 
these  objects  occupy :  which  common  basis  (common 
man-shape  of  friend  and  foe,  common  white  granule  mass 
of  salt  and  sugar),  precisely  not  to  be  acted  upon, 
becomes  the  refuge  of  hesitation.  Refuge  of  hesitation, 
however,  just  because  common  ground,  will  constitute 
the  stem  from  which  the  divergent  idea-meanings  must 
spring.  Whatever  the  impulsive  foreground  of  idea, 
there  will  thus  necessarily  be  a  non-impulsive  back- 
ground, and  in  this  our  idea-meanings  will  rest.1 

This  non-impulsive  background  gives  its  character 
to  the  foreground  also  :  our  action-cues  are  but  features 
belonging  to  it,  only  fortunately  and  accidentally  avail- 

1  In  symbol  :  we  distinguish  between  2>conduct  and  ^-conduct,  not  by 
means  simply  of  z-idea  and  y-idea  ;  but  by  means  first  of  a  non-motor  idea, 
A,  capable  of  the  varieties  Ax  and  Ay.  The  ^1-idea  is,  in  practice,  only 
relatively  non-motor  ;  but  since  the  formula  is  entirely  general,  it  indicates 
an  ultimate  purely  non-motor  basis  of  meanings. 


IDEA  SEEKING  FREEDOM  FROM  FEELING          119 

able  for  our  discriminations.  Through  serving  all  idea- 
differences,  this  background  looms  large ;  background 
and  all  foregrounds  merge  into  one  vast  non-impulsive 
World-object,  infinite  complex  magazine  of  object-fields 
and  field-contents: — space-field,  cosmic  force-field,  spec- 
trum-series, tone-scale,  effort-scale;  human-desire-gamut, 
too,  taken  as  objective  fact;  social  scale,  moral-value 
field,  and  many  others,  together  with  all  their  contents 
and  the  motions  thereof ;  all  motions  and  changes  of 
contents  against  one  ultimate  background-field  of 
infinite  time  ;  all  contents  rooted  in  one  ultimate  back- 
ground-stuff, which  we  may  call  —  problematically  — 
Substance.  Infinite  complex  magazine,  capable  of  serv- 
ing all  action -differences  actual  and  possible,  yet  with 
infinite  unused  resource,  superior  to  and  apart  from  all 
such  use,  —  essentially  unused  by  it.  Such  World- 
object,  in  its  complexity,  is  partially  summarized  in  our 
idea  of  Nature ;  more  completely,  as  objective  Eeality, 
whose  problematic  Substance  sets  the  last  goal  for  all 
idea-meanings. 

In  such  external  World-fact  do  our  idea-meanings  see£ 
lodgment ;  as  if,  I  repeat,  it  were  necessary  to  touch  the 
passionless  ground  of  things,  before  affiliating  with  any 
particular  actions  and  feelings.  The  structure  of  the 
whole  system  of  ideas  and  actions  becomes  indirect, 
triangular :  there  may  be  no  direct  passage  from  per- 
ception to  action,  but  perception  must  first  be  related 
to  substance,  and  from  substance  pass  on  to  action  — 
with  freedom  of  will. 

Now  this  idea  of  a  non-impulsive  background,  which 
at  last   gets    the  mysterious  name  of   Substance,  the 


120     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

external  goal  of  all  idea-meanings,  is  in  no  wise  a  re- 
sult of  development.  It  is  rather  the  aboriginal  fact  of 
consciousness.  Environment,  and  environment  complex- 
ity, have  extended  immeasurably ;  but  externality  has 
become  no  whit  more  external.  From  the  beginning, 
our  idea-making  must  have  held  itself  in  independence 
of  impulse.  For  without  such  prior  independence,  action 
development  could  not  so  much  as  begin.  We  are  able 
to  find  cues  for  divergent  lines  of  action,  because  we 
have  already  been  interested  in  something  else  than 
the  actively  important  features  of  our  world. 1 

Nature  has  early  separated  the  organs  of  perception 
from  the  organs  of  action  ;  and  in  the  freedom  of  per- 
ception, with  its  liberality  of  interest,  care-free  play  and 
exploration,  idea-making  has  freedom  also.  Idea-outlin- 
ing follows  shapes,  perceptive  unities  and  uses,  not  the 
unities  and  uses  of  our  own  action.  Perception  shows 
us,  we  think,  the  immediate  clothing  of  Substance ;  and 
shares  in  that  externality  which  idea-meaning  requires. 
Perception  is  no  doubt  to  be  regarded  biologically  as  a 
means  of  adaptation  :  but  as  such  alone  it  must  be  judged 
immeasurably  wasteful,  supplying  us  with  entire  fields, 
infinite  manifolds  of  objects,  in  order  that  a  few  dis- 
criminations may  be  made  (supplying  also  that  whole 
super-useful  region  of  perceptive  beauty,  whose  extraor- 

1  Especially  is  the  idea  of  the  thing-with-various-uses  visibly  depend- 
ent on  such  liberality  of  interest.  For  if  idea  meant  to  us  just  so  much  ac- 
tion-plan and  nothing  more,  action  routes  might  cross  ad  libitum  without 
ever  exciting  any  knowledge  of  the  fact  of  their  crossing.  The  notion  of  an 
intersection  presupposes  an  interest  in  the  lines  for  their  own  sake,  in  some 
independence  of  the  ends  reached  by  those  lines.  Thus  we  know  water  as 
the  same  thing  in  this  use  and  in  that  only  because  in  any  use  of  it  char- 
acters other  than  those  used  have  freely  engaged  our  attention  ;  qualities 
appealing  to  eye,  touch,  and  the  like. 


IDEA  SEEKING  FREEDOM   FROM   FEELING          121 

dinary  art-development  escapes  so  far  from  biological 
explanation). 

In  spite  of  all  important  evidence  showing  to  what 
extent  perception-interest  is  governed  by  active-interest, 
it  remains  true  that  in  idea-outlining  perception  has  a 
prior  and  independent  head.  So  much  so,  that  when  we 
make  to  ourselves  ideas  of  activities  themselves,  we  in- 
cline to  make  them  in  terms  of  " external' '  perceptions, 
rather  than  in  their  own  proper  coin  (for  instance,  our 
idea  of  walking ',  which  represents  to  us  commonly  walk- 
ing-as-seen,  attribute  of  outer  Substance,  rather  than 
walking-as-inwardly-known  in  terms  of  feeling  and 
impulsiveness,  attribute  of  Self).  Feeling  and  action 
find  in  the  perception-substance-world  some  requisite 
mise-en-scene ;  varieties  of  feeling  and  action  find  here 
a  unity,  coherence,  relatedness,  intelligibility,  which  on 
their  own  ground  they  lack  ;  especially,  they  find  here 
unlimited  room  to  grow  in,  the  dome  of  perception  never 
narrowed  down  to  the  scope,  or  even  the  prospective 
scope,  of  conduct. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  the  ideas  we  make 
as  ideas  of  single  objects  should  show  no  close  corres- 
pondence to  action-need ;  should  share  in  the  super- 
abundance of  the  perceptive  fields  themselves.  From  a 
given  desire  can  never  be  inferred  the  idea  of  the 
object  which  does,  in  concrete  fact,  satisfy  that  desire 
(from  thirst  alone,  what  actual  beverage  can  be  deduced). 
Ideas,  we  say,  do  by  aboriginal  instinct  fix  their  mean- 
ing in  the  ultimate  non-impulsive  Substance  of  the  world ; 
and  idea-outlining  tends  to  follow  the  hints  which  per- 
ception gives  of  the  unities  belonging  to  that  reality-not- 
ourselves. 


122     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

But  here  we  encounter  a  type  of  demurrer,  leading 
direct  to  the  heart  of  the  matter.  Idea-outlining  accord- 
ing to  perception-unities  is  not,  we  are  told,  so  independ- 
ent of  action-reference  as  we  suppose.  Ideas  are  made 
not  indeed  in  the  interest  of  specific  actions,  but  still 
in  the  interest  of  types  of  action  of  very  general  sort. 
Spatially  closed  figures  are  regarded  as  single  things, 
because  solid  outlines  form,  in  general,  the  limiting  lines 
of  our  own  physical  movements  (consideration  finely 
employed  by  Bergson).  Detachable  and  movable  ob- 
jects, especially  moving  objects,  have  evident  biological 
importance  ;  are  indefinitely  liable  to  concern  one's  own 
vital  status:  must  naturally  become  practical  idea-units. 

Significant  here  is  not  so  much  the  interest  alleged 
(which  is  real  enough,  but  still  demonstrably  after  the 
fact,  still  external)  as  the  immense  generality  of  the 
interest.  Why  may  I  not  say,  on  the  same  basis,  that 
objects  interest  me,  because  forsooth  objectivity-in-gen- 
eral  is  practically  portentous  ?  What  is  to  give  into  the 
hands  of  biological  induction  terms  of  just  such  high 
generality  ("spatially  detachable  objects,"  "moving 
objects,"  "  physical  bodies,"  "  forces,"  etc.)  as  expressive 
of  that  in  which  momentous  issues  reside ;  what  if  not 
some  prior  idea?  May  we  not  say  just  this :  that  per- 
ception generalizes  the  conditions  of  conduct;  provides 
generalization  in  advance  ;  and  is  able  to  do  this  because 
of  its  relation  to  our  original  idea  of  Substance  ?  What 
fundamentally  interests  men  is,  in  truth,  just  reality 
— nothing  more  special,  nothing  less.  Around  this  orig- 
inal meaning  gather  all  practical  concerns ;  in  this  all 
importances  are  funded.  Interest  in  reality  is  the  idea- 
making,  idea-outlining  function  of  the  human  mind. 


IDEA  SEEKING  FREEDOM  FROM  FEELING          123 

Interest  in  What  Exists,  not  more  because  it  is  mine 
jthan  because  it  is  not-mine.  Doubtless  all  practical 
motives  lend  their  weight  to  this  peculiar  limiting  inter- 
est ;  but  it  is  not  constituted  by  them.  Some  passion  for 
objectivity,  for  reality,  for  Substance,  quite  prior  to 
other  passions,  there  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  idea ;  a 
passion  not  wholly  of  an  unreligious  nature,  not  wholly 
un-akin  to  the  love  of  God. 

The  nature  of  that  passion,  if  we  could  know  it,  would 
afford  the  answer  to  our  question  regarding  the  organic 
union  between  idea  and  feeling.  It  is  an  inability  to 
believe  in  the  possibility  of  such  a  passion,  a  passion 
for  what  is  merely  because  it  is,  that  closes  the  way  to 
that  solution.  It  is  by  accepting  the  apparent  paradox 
that  we  shall  now  come  to  our  understanding  of  that 
union. 


CHAPTER  XI 

IDEA  IN   ORGANIC  UNION  WITH   FEELING 

TjTEW  ideas  we  have  that  do  not  freely  mix  and 
J-  entangle  themselves  with  feeling,  and  lend  them- 
selves variously  to  the  service  of  action.  But  all  ideas, 
so  we  have  now  concluded,  have  a  natural  and  original 
independence  of  those  stirrings  of  emotion  which 
accompany  our  current  activities.  The  child,  the  savage, 
and  no  doubt  also  the  crayfish,  the  sponge,  the  polyp, 
if  they  are  idea-builders  at  all,  have  an  interest  in  their 
world  which  we  must  call  ( purely  theoretical/  No 
creature  can  construct  ideas  except  through  a  genuine 
non-practical  interest  in  what  is  around  him  simply 
'  because  it  is  there/  Every  idea,  however  rich  in  prac- 
tical association,  is  attached  in  its  ultimate  c  external 
meaning '  to  the  idea  of  reality,  the  center  of  all  this 
free,  dispassionate  interest.1 

1  Whatever  release  any  mind  can  win  from  its  own  present  interests 
and  passions,  for  memory  or  reflection  or  scientific  effort,  is  accomplished 
through  holding  instinctively  or  consciously  to  its  own  idea  of  reality,  or 
of  substance,  in  whatever  form  this  idea  presents  itself  to  him.  It  is  in 
its  religious  form  that  the  idea  of  reality  has  been  the  chief  culprit  in  all 
abstraction  of  the  mind  from  the  current  of  feeling  and  action.  From 
the  beginning,  religious  ideas  have  exhibited  a  certain  aloofness.  The 
seers  have  had  their  practical  and  moral  recommendations  to  make  ;  but 
in  their  cosmologies  and  theologies,  in  their  myth-spinning  generally, 
they  have  been  curiously  free  from  relation  to  human  values.  All  such 
ideas  have  appealed  to  no  other  visible  interest  than  this  ancient  interest 
in  reality,  interest  of  a  purely  theoretical  nature.  I  cannot  defend  the 
religious  idea  against  this  charge,  nor  the  metaphysical  idea  either.  J 


IDEA  IN   ORGANIC   UNION   WITH   FEELING         125 

And  now,  it  is  here  if  at  all,  in  this  center  of  the 
idea's  independence,  that  we  shall  find  the  essential 
union  between  idea  and  feeling.  For  that  same  idea  of 
reality  which  has  so  little  to  do  with  the  beginnings  of 
our  actions,  and  the  stirrings  of  feeling  that  accompany 
those  beginnings,  has  as  I  believe  everything  to  do  with 
the  building  of  their  ends.  The  values  which  our  ac- 
tions aim  at  seem  to  me  to  be  the  direct  and  continuous 
creation  of  that  idea.  How  this  is  the  case  is  a  simple 
matter  if  we  can  win  the  right  view  of  it ;  but  the  win- 
ning of  that  view  has  its  own  difficulty. 

Our  actions  drive  on  incessantly  to  their  ends,  and 
these  ends  we  call  values.  We  take  these  values,  our 
various  human  interests  and  concerns,  for  the  most  part 
as  self -justifying  and  self-explanatory:  that  this  thing  is 
a  source  of  pleasure,  and  that  a  source  of  pain,  we 
accept  as  ultimate  facts,  our  practical  first  premises. 
We  understand,  in  general,  that  in  the  pursuit  of  these 
various  satisfactions,  nature  is  luring  us  on  to  live,  and  to 
increase  life.  But  we  seldom  enquire  why  our  living 
itself  is  of  interest  to  nature ;  as  apart  from  these  same 
values  we  think  it  would  hardly  be  of  interest  to  our- 
selves. Our  values,  then,  remain  essentially  unexplained. 
They  remain  too  without  clear  relation  to  each  other. 
We  like  beauty,  and  we  like  company ;  we  enjoy  music, 
and  care  for  children,  and  appreciate  a  courtesy.  These 
are  facts  of  instinct  and  human  nature,  and  we  adopt 
them  as  our  several  ends.  It  was  for  the  sake  of  winning 

see  and  acknowledge  the  futility  of  much,  perhaps  most,  of  this  curiosity- 
work.  But  I  see  also  in  that  power  of  detachment  the  worst  in  close 
conjunction  with  the  best. 


126     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

these  scattered  values  that  we  were  supposed,  by  the 
action-theory,  to  be  concerned  in  making  ideas. 

But  if  we  can  so  readily  accept  these  ends  as  final  facts, 
there  is  no  need  of  explaining  the  interest  in  reality. 
We  may  simply  say  that  this  also  is  a  value,  and  is  its  own 
justification  ;  and  this  is  often  said,  as  if  it  were  enough 
to  say.  If  in  our  theories  of  human  nature  we  no  longer 
think  it  necessary  to  reduce  altruism  to  a  transformed 
egoism ;  if  we  have  long  since  learned  that  care  for  an- 
other is  quite  as  native  and  original  as  care  for  oneself, 
that  love  is  one  of  the  instincts  ;  it  can  do  no  violence  to 
our  scientific  principles  to  accept  the  love  of  reality  as 
another  instinct,  an  ultimate  fact  of  value  like  the  rest. 
But  it  ought  to  do  violence  to  our  scientific  principles 
to  fall  so  readily  into  finalities.  Our  values  need  to 
be  explained  ;  our  interest  in  reality  not  more  than  our 
interest  in  food  or  in  society  or  in  imitation.  And 
it  is  probable  that  if  any  value  could  be  explained,  they 
would  all  fall  into  some  sort  of  system.  The  key  to  that 
system  may  well  be  furnished  by  this  same  interest  in 
reality.  For  in  separating  that  interest  from  all  others, 
we  have  by  a  sort  of  distillation  separated  out  as  it  were 
an  instance  of  pure  value.  We  cannot  explain  this 
interest  by  any  other  ;  but  we  may  be  able  to  explain  all 
other  interests  by  this  one. 

For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  interest  we  have 
in  reality  is  somehow  substantially  bound  up  with  the 
interest  we  have  in  all  other  ends :  there  is  a  discernible 
relation  between  the  quantity  of  these  two  types  of 
interest.  The  passion  poured  into  the  construction  of  an 
independent  idea-world  is  in  some  close  connection  with 
the  sum  of  passion  poured  into  the  practical  pursuit  of  all 


IDEA  IN  ORGANIC   UNION  WITH  FEELING         127 

other  things.  The  more  interest  there  is  in  life  generally, 
the  more  devotion  is  spent  upon  knowing  reality  for; 
itself  and  vice  versa.  Let  the  Renaissance  serve  as  an 
illustration.  If,  then,  the  interest  in  reality  is  not  derived 
m  the  interest  in  other  things,  there  is  a  strong  sug- 
tion  that  the  interest  in  other  things  may  be  derived 
from  the  interest  in  reality.  I  have  no  doubt  that  in 
actual  working  order  dependence  is  mutual ;  that  passion 
spent  in  either  pursuit  becomes  a  cause  of  the  zeal- 
level  of  the  other :  but  interest  in  reality  has  the  priority. 
Whatever  energy  is  spent  in  understanding  experience, 
in  attaching  its  meanings  to  the  reality-idea,  is  so  much 
recoverable  energy  for  all  other  valuing.  If  this  is  the 
case,  then  work  done  by  us  on  the  idea  is  no  work  on 
action-cues  perhaps;  but  it  is  work  done  on  the  worth 
of  living  itself,  it  is  the  creation  of  the  very  fabric  of 
value.  Now  let  us  consider  how  this  may  be. 

It  will  be  generally  admitted  that  the  value  of  any 
object  depends  as  well  upon  the  thinker  as  upon  the 
thing.  Values  vary  with  the  man ;  and  within  the  man's 
life,  they  vary  with  his  powers  of  attention,  and  what 
he  can  bring  to  the  subject.  They  vary  with  what  psy- 
chology has  called  his  '  apperceptive  mass ';  if  you  enjoy 
Widor's  music  and  I  do  not,  it  has  something  to  do 
with  your  greater  knowledge  and  experience  in  the 
world  of  music.  A  state  of  keen  enjoyment  is  a  state 
of  high  mental  activity :  the  resources  of  memory  and 
invention  are  loosened,  the  mind  becomes  a  free  field 
for  quick  and  accurate  connections  powerfully  f ocussed.1 

1  The  same  may  be  said  of  anger  and  of  certain  other  negative  emo- 
tions. In  so  far  as  these  are  states  of  enthusiasm  they  are  also  percep- 


128     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

Pleasure  is  evidently  a  mode  of  being  aware  of  the 
world ;  a  way  of  taking  and  attending  to  things,  trans- 
ferable from  one  object  to  another,  tending  to  propa- 
gate itself  and  continue  itself.  Delight  develops  atten- 
tion ;  and  attention  develops  more  delight.  That  same 
object  which  under  a  cold  gaze  reveals  no  interest  may 
under  an  eye  already  kindled  with  pleasure  develop 
unlimited  value.  Hence  wit  and  fun  once  started  can 
sustain  themselves  with  little  fuel  from  outside ;  any  trifle 
becomes  a  matter  of  extraordinary  feeling.  Any  object 
or  task  strenuously  attended  to  begins  to  glow  with 
some  heat  of  value  after  a  while ;  there  is  something 
like  spontaneous  generation  of  values  under  the  focus 
of  attention.  And  everything  we  enjoy  for  a  moment 
prepares  us  to  like  something  different  in  the  next ; 
because  it  brings  under  way  in  us  that  mode  of  regard- 
ing things  wherein  the  secret  of  value  lies. 

In  some  way,  then,  value  is  conferred  upon  the  object 
by  that  with  which  we  can  meet  it.  But  what  is  it  that 
a  man  brings  with  him  which  can  determine  the  feeling- 
worth  of  his  world?  His  ' apperceptive  mass/  indeed; 
and  this  consists  of  what  ?  Of  instincts  in  part,  organic 
capacities  for  enjoyment?  Experiences  also,  and  all 
sorts  of  associated  fancies  and  memories  and  ideas  ? 
But  all  of  this  is  nothing  other  than  idea;  idea  being 
but  experience  itself  in  all  its  life  and  infinitude  pre- 
pared for  this  very  work  of  meeting  new  experience 
with  justice.  What  any  conscious  organism  can  bring 
to  a  new  experience  is  but  its  prior  experience  referred 

tions  of  value  and  need  not  here  be  separately  analyzed.  The  problem 
of  pain,  and  negative  feeling  in  general,  is  considered  in  chapter  zzzii. 


IDEA  IN  ORGANIC   UNION   WITH  FEELING          129 

to  reality,  held,  that  is,  in  idea;  whether  ancestral 
experience,  embodied  in  structure  (instinct-idea)  to  be 
made  the  individual's  own  by  re-thinking;  or  his  own 
experience  taken  up  into  his  own  thought:  in  one  case 
as  in  the  other  —  idea.  It  is  this  thought-over  experi- 
ence, experience  already  organized  into  idea,  which 
measures  the  power  of  any  mind  to  appreciate  new 
experience,  to  find  in  the  world  objects  of  value. 
Value  varies  with  idea-resource.1 

These  considerations  all  but  compel  the  simple  hy- 
pothesis which  I  have  here  to  offer.  It  is  that  all  valuing 
(and  so  all  feeling)  is  a  way  of  knowing  objects  with 
one's  whole-idea.  In  some  way,  in  valuing,  appreciat- 
ing, enjoying,  we  are  using  this  idea-mass ;  yet  not  in 
the  effortful  way  of  deliberate  thinking :  an  object  of 
value  is  an  object  in  which  my  whole-idea  finds  some 
peculiar  ease  and  sufficiency  of  application.  The  worth 
which  any  object  or  end  can  have  for  me  depends  on 
mutual  fitness  between  my  idea-mass  and  that  object  — 
the  fitness  of  my  idea  to  comprehend  the  object;  the 
fitness  of  the  object  to  engage  the  idea.2  Let  me  state 
this  theory  more  fully,  and  then  illustrate  it  at  length. 

Let  us  summon  up  such  true  conception  of  idea  as  we 

1  To  put  the  matter  roughly  :  to  be  more  alive  is  both  to  see  more 
and  to  feel  more  — and  these  are  not  two  separate  things,  but  at  bottom 
one. 

2  In  a  former  chapter  (chapter  vi)  we  suggested  that  feeling  might  be 
explained  as  a  transition  from  one  state  of  knowledge  to  another.     Now 
we  have  to  complete  this  view  by  explaining  the  original  instability  in 
our  knowledge-field  at  any  time.     This  instability,  I  think,  is  due  in  part 
to  the  varying  capacity  of  objects  for  the  total  idea-mass,  and  partly  to 
the  varying  potential  of  this  idea-mass  itself,  due  to  work  done  upon  it. 
See  for  more  detail  than  this  chapter  can  give  the  explanatory  essay  on 
Idea  and  Value  in  Biological  Context. 


130     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

can  now  muster;  idea,  as  the  living  and  infinite  thing 
with  which  we  meet  and  know  our  experience.  Note 
what  can  be  easily  noted :  that  any  successful  working 
of  the  idea  in  knowing  its  object  is  a  pleasure  —  espe- 
cially the  finding  of  an  idea,  and  the  use  of  a  new-found 
idea  (as  a  child  repeats  the  new-learned  word  with 
recurrent  satisfaction).  Note  that  of  all  ideas,  the  idea 
of  reality  is  most  of  all  thought  with  ;  as  all  ideas  seek 
their  meaning-terminus  in  reality,  so  all  idea-use  is  at 
the  same  time  use  of  the  idea  of  reality.  With  our 
reality-idea  we  think,  not  only  reality  itself,  but  also,  so 
far  as  we  are  able,  every  particular  object  of  experience. 
Spontaneously,  not  deliberately,  we  endeavor  to  see  in 
each  object  of  attention  a  case,  more  or  less  complete,  of 
what  reality  means  to  us.  Now  suppose  that  the  value 
of  any  object  of  attention  is  nothing  other  than  the 
entering  of  that  reality-idea  into  the  thought  of  the 
object.  Suppose  that  the  degree  and  sign  (positive  or 
negative)  of  that  value  is  a  measure  of  the  success  or 
unsuccess  of  this  idea-use  ;  the  fulness  with  which  that 
object-vessel  can  contain  that  wealth  of  background 
meaning,  always  pressing  to  know  —  not  to  be  known. 
Would  it  not  at  once  become  clear  that  our  reality- 
idea,  our  whole-idea,  must  determine  the  level  *  at  which 
all  our  values  will  stand,  must  be,  in  a  definite  sense, 
the  reservoir  of  all  value  for  us? 

All  idea  at  work  upon  its  object  is  a  source  of  feel- 
ing. As  for  the  idea  not  at  work  upon  its  object — let 
us  here  once  for  all  note  that  there  is  no  such  thing. 
The  unused  idea,  lying  latent  and  un-feeling  in  the 

1  Strictly  speaking,  must  constitute  one  determinant  of  that  level. 
What  the  objective  determinants  may  be,  we  need  not  here  consider. 


IDEA  IN  ORGANIC   UNION  WITH  FEELING         131 

mind,  is  the  most  obstructive,  yet  emptiest  of  all  psy- 
chological superstitions.  The  life  of  the  idea  is  in  its 
use,  not  as  being  thought  of  (one  must  repeat)  but  as 
thinking;  and  not  alone  in  thinking  its  own-named 
object;  but  also  in  thinking  every  other  object  upon 
which  it  may  even  remotely  bear  —  in  the  end,  every 
other  object;  in  the  process  of  thinking  any  object  before 
consciousness  no  idea  can  be  wholly  inactive.  With 
what  idea,  pray,  do  I  think  hat  f  With  the  hat-idea,  to 
be  sure.  Yes,  but  is  the  clothing-idea  unconcerned? — 
or  the  city-street-idea  ?  or  the  civilized-society-extraor- 
dinary-requirements-ideas? or  the  man -and- woman  - 
ideas?  or  the  whole  mass  of  aesthetic  notions,  and 
political,  historical,  even  religious  opinions?  With  all 
these,  and  with  all  other  ideas  summing  themselves  up 
currently  in  my  whole-idea,  hat  is  thought.  If  hat  has 
a  practical  meaning  as  something  to-be-put-on,  or  to-be- 
taken-off,  or  to  be  otherwise  dealt  with,  it  is  because 
hat  through  these  other  ideas  has  already  acquired  a 
more  intimate  significance  and  value  than  these  extrane- 
ous action-hints  can  suggest.  A  value  measured  by  the 
degree,  proportion,  and  facility  with  which  my  whole 
idea-equipment  can  find  itself  in  hat.  Probably  this 
direct  feeling-value  of  hat  is  not  large ;  probably  a  prim- 
rose, a  bit  of  music,  a  single  human  being,  would  involve 
my  idea-world  more  adequately  and  immediately:  if  so, 
the  feeling-value  of  these  objects  is  higher.  But  in  one 
case  as  in  the  other,  whatever  may  occupy  attention, 
occupies  the  man;  it  is  he  as  a  total  self,  mind-total, 
who  for  the  moment  gives  himself  to  that  object,  dis- 
covering in  it  what  value  it  may  have  for  him. 

The  meaning  of  these  proposals  may  best  be  seen 


132     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS   THEORY 

where  value  varies  visibly  with  idea.  As  where  ghost- 
terror  is  created  by  idea-anticipation ;  or  where  with 
the  growth  of  knowledge  an  interest  seems  to  develop 
out  of  no-interest,  value  created  from  nothing  by  the 
rise  of  idea  and  idea-application.1  To  become  a  connois- 
seur, an  amateur,  in  any  field  is  a  self -furthering  process 
after  the  first  few  conceptions  have  been  won,  the  first 
elements  of  a  collection  made,  and  the  idea,  now  fairly 
alive,  becomes  hungry  for  its  own  food.  Acquiring 
some  bit  of  skill,  and  delighting  in  the  use  of  it,  is  a 
value  creation  of  the  same  type,  though  the  units  here 
are  idea-action  couples,  not  ideas  alone ;  the  delight  is  in 
the  meeting  of  situations,  the  union  of  confidence  with 
challenge  and  novelty,  the  instantaneous  judgment  that 
my  idea  is  meeting  the  various  phases  of  the  new  case 
as  they  arise,  even  while  my  hand  is  carrying  out  the 
part  assigned  by  the  idea.  What  one  does  well,  one 
likes ;  what  one  does  not  like,  dancing,  speaking  French, 
public  ceremony,  is  in  all  likelihood  something  one  does 
less  than  well,  feeling  therein  an  inadequacy,  shall  we 
not  say  of  "  habit,"  modestly  suggesting  "  lack  of  prac- 
tice"?—  shall  we  not  rather  say  (tracing  our  feeling  to 
its  lair)  primarily  an  infacility  of  idea,  a  felt  inferiority 
not  of  the  animal  but  of  the  spirit.  In  all  such  matters 

1  The  whole  history  of  value  we  cannot  here  follow.  In  the  more 
momentary  spot-values  of  pleasure  and  pain,  or  of  direct  satisfaction  of 
instinct,  the  work  of  idea  is  not  quickly  seen.  Such  values  seem  fixed  by 
Nature  in  the  physical  frame  ;  a  certain  value-capital,  one  might  think, 
sufficiently  free  from  idea.  Yet  not  meaning-less;  rather,  spots  of  instan- 
taneous meaning,  whose  idea-elements  are  separated  with  difficulty, 
becoming  slowly  interpretable  as  the  idea-world  thickens  about  them,  as 
poetry  in  time,  then  philosophy  begin  to  voice  the  meaning  of  sex-love. 
In  greater  detail  this  theory  of  value  is  presented  in  the  final  essay  on 
"Idea  and  Value." 


IDEA  IN  ORGANIC   UNION   WITH   FEELING         133 

rapid  subsumption  is  the  inner  kernel  of  delight.  The 
pleasure  found  in  a  generalization,  even  in  mildly  lifting 
the  conception  of  ordinary  things  into  a  wider  sphere 
of  relation  (flowers  as  modified  leaves,  or  neuron-idea 
embracing  all  nerve-forms) ;  the  discovery  of  genial  re- 
semblances wherein  so  much  of  the  pleasure  of  litera- 
ture consists ;  that  noting  of  more  hidden  likenesses 
which  has  been  said  to  mark  genius  —  all  this  value- 
making  is  but  the  idea-making  process  in  its  own  natural 
freedom. 

Note  also  how  values  change  as  life  matures.  The 
ends  which  men  pursue  are  less  tangible  than  those 
spot-splashes  of  pleasure-color  hypnotic  to  the  eye  of 
childhood,  though  not  excluding  them.  Family,  and 
status,  and  power,  and  the  doing  of  human  work,  and 
whatever  else,  are  ends  whose  appeal  can  be  seen  to 
vary  visibly  from  man  to  man,  not  so  much  with  instinct 
as  with  experience,  and  not  so  much  with  experience 
alone  as  with  digested  experience,  Weltanschauung, 
whole-idea.  The  significance  of  any  given  event  will 
be  estimated  variously,  a  given  circumstance  will  give 
pleasure  or  pain,  chiefly  according  to  the  '  way  of  think- 
ing,' the  '  point  of  view '  of  the  subject.  The  critical 
question  put  to  me  by  any  happening  is,  "  Can  my  con- 
ception of  reality  accept  and  place  that  happening,  or 
can  it  not  ? "  That  alone  will  please  me  in  the  end 
which  is  according  to  Nature  as  I  conceive  Nature ; 
that  alone  can  hold  me  prisoner  wherein  Nature  itself, 
or  reality,  or  Deity,  becomes  visible  or  vocal.  Experi- 
ence is  a  course  of  perpetual  conflict  between  my  Idea 
and  my  circumstance,  each  modifying  the  other  until  my 
idea  of  reality  can  cope  with  circumstance  and  all  its 


134     RELIGIOUS   FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

issues.  No  man  can  be  content  to  accept  evil  as  finality : 
each  must  have  his  theory  of  evil,  as  a  means  of  bring- 
ing that  evil  under  the  conception  of  the  whole,  and  so 
—  of  disposing  of  it.  To  win  such  idea,  and  to  use  it 
effectively,  constitutes  certainly  not  the  whole,  but  a 
large  part  of  the  achievable  satisfaction  of  any  mature 
human  life. 

Consciousness  is  essentially  cumulative ;  experience 
becomes  memory,  becomes  idea,  whereby  as  Bergson 
justly  insists,  no  new  event  can  have  the  same  meaning 
with  any  previous  event  —  for  none  can  be  received 
into  the  same  soul.  All  such  cumulation,  however,  builds 
itself  into  the  fabric  of  the  permanent  whole-idea,  there- 
by contributing,  in  any  person,  to  a  quality  of  character, 
a  general  value-tone,  or  flavor,  which  becomes  relatively 
stable.  That  which  we  first  sense  in  any  person  is  the 
operation  of  this  whole-idea ;  that  which  we  value  is 
some  excellence  in  its  operation.  Burke  elevates  what- 
ever subject  he  touches ;  his  place  is  secure  among  the 
minds  of  earth  because  the  vigor  of  that  whole-presence 
casts  a  nobility  over  all  valuation,  makes  human  exist- 
ence another  and  better  thing  than  at  our  common  ease 
it  inclines  to  be.  To  see  the  significance  of  things  triv- 
ial is  the  prerogative  of  greatness,  to  see  everything  as 
bearing  upon  the  whole  is  both  genius  and  happiness, 
to  see  all  things  sub  specie  ceternitatis  is  the  joy  of 
religion  itself.  To  conceive  a  thing  largely,  to  throw 
over  it  a  generous  dome  —  this  is  the  very  physiology  of 
human  worth.  It  is  not  necessarily  the  express  logical 
reflection  upon  things  that  endows  a  life  richly  with 
this  human  quality.  It  is  not  even  the  clear-held  mem- 
ory of  special  circumstances.  It  is  rather  the  spontane- 


IDEA  IN  ORGANIC   UNION  WITH  FEELING         135 

ous  after-working  of  experience  once  well-met  —  which 
is  Idea,  holding  idea  and  event  together  until  they 
answer  "  Done  "  :  this  experience-well-met  it  is,  which 
entering  into  the  bone  and  blood  of  the  Idea  (for  the 
most  part  unreachable  in  speech)  builds  human  quality 
and  human  worth. 

Love  itself,  then,  if  we  are  right,  is  not  a  thing  apart 
from  knowledge.  That  which  we  love  is  not  indeed 
learning,  or  logic-skill,  but  some  reality-thought  at 
work  upon  an  actual  experience,  creating  there  the  very 
material  of  beauty  and  value.  No  one  will  be  loved 
blindly ;  no  one  will  be  loved  as  other  than  an  intel- 
ligence, human  and  universal,  sharing  in  that  same 
reality  which  all  men  share.  Love  and  sympathy  we  often 
think  of  as  feeling,  in  direct  contrast  to  idea.  It  is  clear! 
[however  that  they  both  are  cognizances  of  another,  do 
in  some  way  make  the  leap  between  my  own  soul  and 
the  soul  of  some  one  not-myself,  intend  to  put  me  in 
veritable  rapport  with  what  thought  is  passing  there, 
the  very  tour  deforce  of  objectivity.  We  note  further 
that  that  sympathy  which  is  not  exact  knowledge  of 
the  other,  is  of  feeble  and  ineffective  quality;  that  we 
incline  to  measure  the  worth  of  sympathy  by  the  extent 
of  its  gratuitous  and  extraordinary  perception  of  the 
other's  situation.  Sympathy  notes  what  the  casual  eye 
ignores :  for  sympathy  is  objectivity  of  mind,  and  objec- 
tivity of  mind  is  knoiving.  Interest  in  objectivity,  which 
we  have  found  at  the  root  of  all  idea-making,  is  love 
itself  directed  to  reality ;  and  conversely,  the  interest  in 
reality  is  the  measure  of  all  possible  love  and  apprecia- 
tion, toward  humanity,  or  in  the  Arts. 

Love  and  sympathy  are  the  activity  of  the  idea.  And 


136    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

in  their  exercise,  the  idea  is  enlarged.  The  lover  widens 
his  experience  as  the  non-lover  cannot.  He  adds  to  the 
mass  of  his  idea-world,  and  acquires  thereby  enhanced 
power  to  appreciate  all  things.  Is  not  this  the  suffi- 
cient solution  of  that  long-standing  difficulty  between 
*  egoism  and  altruism  ? '  The  altruist  alone  can  accu- 
mulate that  treasure  of  idea  through  which  all  things 
must  be  enjoyed  that  are  enjoyed.  No  one  has,  or  can 
have,  any  ' egoistic'  satisfaction  except  as  a  conse- 
quence of  so  much  effective  love  of  reality  as  there  is 
in  him  by  birth  or  acquisition. 

If  what  is  here  said  does  truly  represent  the  organic 
bond  between  idea  and  feeling,  we  may  now  confirm — 
but  with  better  understanding — the  extraordinary  inti- 
macy between  the  ideas  of  religion  and  human  feeling  at 
large.  It  is  not  alone  the  specifically  religious  feeling 
with  which  the  religious  idea  is  bound  up  :  it  is  —  as  an 
interpretation  of  our  whole-idea  —  a  factor  in  all  human 
feeling  and  value.  And  that,  immediately  —  not  by  way 
of  any  external  arrangements  in  which  the  work  of  God 
may  meet  and  supplement  the  work  of  men :  not  exclud- 
ing these — not  waiting  for  them.  The  use  of  the  God- 
idea  (which  if  one  have  cannot  but  be  the  most-used  of 
all  ideas — not  as  though t-of  but  as  thinking),  the  use 
of  this  idea  will  be  the  chief  determinant  of  the  value- 
level  in  any  consciousness.  Whether  or  not  the  termi- 
nal-object of  one's  faith  be  called  God,  whatever  object 
comes  before  the  mind  of  any  man  must  inevitably  be 
judged  at  last  by  that  man's  sense  of  the  nature  of  the 
reality  with  which  he  has,  in  the  end,  to  do;  and  thereby 
must  the  current-worth  of  his  experience  be  continuously 


IDEA  IN   ORGANIC    UNION   WITH   FEELING         137 

determined.  And  very  probably  the  religious  feelings 
themselves,  religious  fear,  religious  hope,  religious  wor- 
ship, are  in  part  instinctive  recognitions  of  the  imme- 
diate vital  bearing  of  such  idea-possession  upon  every 
conceivable  human  value :  not  only  as  conserving  those 
values  (from  internal  decay)  but  also  as  presiding  over 
their  perpetual  increase.  The  meaning  of  the  religious 
idea  is  so  far  inseparable  from  this  fateful  value  bearing 
as  almost  to  justify  the  statement  that  religion  is  the 
region  where  fact  and  value  coincide :  where  there  is 
no  idea  apart  from  feeling,  as  there  is  no  feeling  apart 
from  idea. 

We  have  then  no  cause  to  fear  that  labor  and  inter- 
est spent  on  religious  truth  will  be  lost  from  the  side  of 
feeling.  It  is  only  by  a  recovery  of  "  theoretical "  con- 
viction that  religion  can  either  maintain  its  own  vitality 
or  contribute  anything  specific  to  human  happiness.  In 
the  attainment  of  knowledge,  feeling  —  in  so  far  as  it 
is  connected  with  agitation  and  active-impulse  —  is  silent : 
but  the  end  of  feeling  is  at  the  same  time  the  beginning 
of  a  new  world  of  value,  wherein  all  feelings  are  reborn 
through  renewal  of  their  source.  Through  losing  its 
life,  and  only  thus,  can  feeling  save  its  life.1 

1  This  is  true  whether  religious  knowledge  is  won  in  the  course  of 
metaphysical  reflection,  or  as  the  mystics  have  often  won  their  insight 
through  a  process  which  looks  very  different,  through  worship.  In  worship 
also,  feeling  as  a  spur  to  particular  action  comes  momentarily  to  rest. 
Schleiermacher's  interpretation  of  religious  experience  in  terms  of  depend- 
ence, awe,  reverence  —  relatively  quiescent  and  contemplative  feelings 
we  called  them  — is  not  far  from  the  truth;  but  above  these  feelings  and 
including  them  stands  the  impulse  of  worship,  in  which  all  these  other 
feelings  unite  and  finally  vanish  into  a  present  sense  of  reality  and  worth. 
Worship  conducts  religious  feeling  to  its  terminus  in  cognizance:  and  thus 
worship  stands  at  the  node  of  a  rhythm  or  alternation  through  which  the 


138     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

__       -,      .  .uilipfV  ' 

We  may  now  perceive,  in  bare  outline,  the  more  lit- 
eral sense  of  our  former  figure  (which  represented  reli- 
gion as  a  parent  rather  than  an  agent  in  history.  For  the 
religious  idea  bears  upon  the  Arts,  not  so  much  through 
particular  instigations  of  thought  and  action  as  through 
a  more  internal  fruitfulness,  watering  and  sustaining  all 
those  perceptions  of  value,  in  which  the  work  of  the 
Arts  must  terminate.  It  is  through  devotion  to  the  Idea, 
to  the  reality  of  the  world — a  devotion  which,  what- 
ever else  it  may  be,  is  also  a  theoretical  devotion  —  that 
religious  feeling  and  all  human  feeling  must  be  kept  alive. 

values  of  our  lives  pass  —  disappearing  and  reappearing.    The  principle  of 
this  alternation  is  further  developed  in  Part  V. 


CHAPTER  XH 
THE  WILL  AS   A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH 

WHATEVER  value  religion  has  for  man  will  be 
funded,  we  now  judge,  in  the  religious  ideas, 
especially  in  the  religious  world-idea  or  reality-idea  or 
substance-idea — the  idea  of  God.  Judging  religion 
solely  by  its  effectiveness  in  human  affairs  we  will  have 
no  religion  without  metaphysics,  which  is  but  a  knowl- 
edge of  reality.  Religion  does  its  work  by  way  of  its 
truth.  Creed  and  theology  become  again  important  to 
us ;  become  the  essential  treasures  of  religion :  for  in 
them  the  race  preserves  from  age  to  age  the  determin- 
ing factors  of  all  human  worth. 

Such  is,  in  fact,  my  own  belief.  But  there  is  one  for- 
midable question  to  be  met  before  we  can  either  rest  in 
this  conclusion,  or  wholly  understand  its  meaning.  We 
have  been  assuming  that  reality  is  a  finished  total  which 
it  is  our  place  to  recognize  and  adjust  ourselves  to,  with- 
out presuming  to  alter  its  general  aspect.  We  have  been 
assuming  that  if  there  is  a  God  at  all,  God  is  a  fixity  in 
the  universe;  a  being  whom  we  must  accept  and  not  un- 
dertake to  change.  We  have  been  assuming  that  the  ob- 
jects of  our  religious  interestare  all  made  up  in  advance, 
and  that  our  own  wills  have  no  part  to  play  in  deter- 
mining what  is  ;  in  short  that  as  knowers  of  reality  we 
must  be  passive,  receptive  toward  the  truth  as  it  is,  tak- 
ing it  as  we  find  it,  in  experience  and  in  idea.  But 
this  general  assumption  of  ours,  that  reality  such  as 


140     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

religion  deals  with  is  what  it  is  in  independence  of  our 
own  wills,  not  to  be  created  or  destroyed  by  anything 
we  may  resolve  or  do  about  it,  —  this  general  assump- 
tion is  open  to  doubt. 

There  are  certainly  some  regions  of  reality  which  are 
unfinished.  We  are  endowed  with  wills  only  because 
there  are  such  regions,  to  which  it  is  our  whole  occupa- 
tion to  give  shape  and  character.  In  such  regions  the 
will-to-believe  is  justified,  because  it  is  no  will-to-make- 
believe,  but  a  veritable  will  to  create  the  truth  in  which 
we  believe.  What  I  believe  of  my  fellow  men  goes  far 
to  determine  what  my  fellow  men  actually  are.  Believe 
men  liars — they  show  themselves  such;  determine  your- 
self upon  their  essential  goodness,  and  they  do  not  disap- 
point your  resolve  :  your  belief  is  not  one  which  can  ever 
be  refuted,  for  the  characters  of  men  are  not  finished 
parts  of  reality ;  they  are  still  being  built,  and  your  will 
is  a  factor  in  the  building.  Where  truth  is  thus  waiting 
to  be  finished  or  determined,  the  will  may  hold  the 
deciding  play. 

Every  social  need,  such  as  the  need  for  friendship, 
must  be  a  party  to  its  own  satisfaction :  I  cannot  pas- 
sively find  my  friend  as  a  ready-made  friend ;  a  ready- 
made  human  being  he  may  be,  but  his  friendship  for 
me  I  must  help  to  create  by  my  own  active  resolve. 
So  of  the  great  political  reality,  the  State.  This  also  is 
nothing  which  man  has  found  ready-made.  The  State 
is  a  reality  which  is  what  it  is  by  dint  of  the  combined 
resolves  of  many  human  wills,  through  time  :  we  individ- 
uals find  the  State  as  something  apparently  finished, 
standing  there  as  something  to  be  empirically  accepted  ; 
but  at  no  time  does  the  existence  of  this  object  become 


THE   WILL  AS  A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH  141 

so  independent  that  it  can  continue  to  hold  its  reality 
apart  from  the  good -will  which  from  moment  to  mo- 
ment recreates  it.     May  it  be  that  the  objects  in  which  ftM 
religion  is  concerned  are  in  some  ways  like  these,  belong- 
ing to  the  unfinished  regions  of  reality? 

We  find  our  religion  much  as  we  find  our  State,  an 
inherited  possession  fixed  in  its  main  outlines  by  no 
will  of  our  own;  yet  an  expression,  perhaps,  of  the 
racial  good-will  of  men,  depending  like  the  State  on  the 
continued  good-will  of  all  individuals  for  its  validity, 
even  for  its  truth.  Religion  throws  over  human  life 
a  unity  like  that  of  the  State,  but  vaster :  it  provides 
a  canopy  under  which  all  men  may  recognize  their 
brotherhood :  in  the  good-will  of  religion  a  totality  of 
spirit  is  brought  about  which  apart  from  that  good- 
will has  no  independent  existence.  In  holding  to  this 
qualification  of  my  whole-idea  —  by  the  idea  of  a 
spiritual  totality  which  I  must  cooperate  with  other 
men  to  make  real — I  find  an  immeasurable  and  sub- 
stantial enlargement  of  my  field  of  vision  and  so  of 
my  whole  level  of  values.  Is  not  this  spiritual  unity, 
though  a  function  of  the  will  of  man,  a  large  part  of  I 
what  I  mean  by  the  name  God?  Through  religion,  too, 
a  still  greater  totality  is  accomplished :  a  world  beyond 
is  brought  into  conjunction  with  our  present  interest,  ^ 
and  our  mortal  lives  are  endowed  with  prospects  of 
immortality.  Yet  I  strongly  doubt  whether  immortality 
is  any  such  predetermined  reality  that  it  exists  for  any 
person  apart  from  that  person's  will  to  make  it  real.  The 
future  life  may  well  be  such  an  object  as  my  decision 
can  make  real  or  unreal,  so  far  as  my  own  experience  is 


142     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

concerned.  And  in  general,  when  we  consider  closely 
the  kind  of  object  which  religion  presents  for  our  faith 
we  find  it  such  as  might  well  be  plastic  to  the  determi- 
nations of  the  will,  more  plastic  even  than  friendship  or 
the  State.  For  these  objects  are  not  to  be  found  on 
earth  like  the  friend ;  nor  are  they  to  be  set  up  in  visi- 
ble form  like  the  State  :  they  exist  wholly  in  that  region 
of  the  spirit,  whose  coming  and  going  is  immediately 
sensitive  to  every  variation  of  loyalty  and  disloyalty  on 
the  part  of  the  souls  in  which  alone  it  has  its  life. 

Further,  the  difference  between  a  religious  view  of 
the  world  and  a  non-religious  view  lies  chiefly  in  the 
quality  or  character  which  is  attributed  to  the  world 
as  a  whole.  It  does  not  lie  in  the  circumstance  that  the 
religious  mind  has  a  whole-idea,  while  the  non-religious 
mind  has  none :  every  man  must  have  his  whole-idea,  and 
such  as  it  is,  it  will  determine  what  value  existence  may 
have  for  him.  But  the  critical  difference  appears  in  the 
judgments  about  the  whole  ;  whether  this  reality  of  ours 
is  divine,  or  infernal,  or  an  indifferent  universal  grave- 
pit.  These  differences,  we  may  say,  are  differences  in 
predicates,  rather  than  in  the  subject ;  and  it  is  precisely 
in  the  matter  of  the  predicates  which  can  be  applied  to 
the  world  as  a  whole  that  we  found  the  primary  diffi- 
culty of  religious  knowledge  to  lie.1  Every  one  begins 
with  his  whole-idea  ;  but  it  is  the  function  of  religion  to 
interpret  this  whole  as  divine ;  in  brief,  to  make  the 
tran  sition  from  the  whole-idea  to  the  idea  of  God.  These 
other  words  of  ours,  non-committal  in  regard  to  quality 
—  "the  whole,"  "substance,"  "reality"— do  they 
fairly  name  that  with  which  religion  has  to  do  ?  Is  not 

1  Pp.  100  ff.  above. 


THE   WILL   AS   A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH  143 

the  problem  of  religious  knowledge  a  problem  of  the 
attributes  of  reality;1  and  are  not  these  attributes 
indeterminate,  apart  from  the  will  ? 

For  it  is  not  simply  the  case  that  these  attributes 
which  religion  ascribes  to  reality  (divinity,  beneficence, 
soul-preserving  or  value-conserving  properties)  are 
invisible,  spiritual,  inaccessible  to  observation:  it  is  the 
case  that  these  ideas,  so  far  as  reasons  go,  are  in  apparent 
equilibrium  —  neither  provable  nor  disprovable.  The 
world  would  be  consistent  without  God ;  it  would  also 
be  consistent  with  God :  whichever  hypothesis  a  man 
adopts  will  fit  experience  equally  well ;  neither  one,  so 
far  as  accounting  for  visible  facts  is  concerned,  works 
better  than  the  other.  I  have  often  wondered  whether 
in  these  supermundane  matters  the  universe  may  not  be 
so  nicely  adjusted  (and  withal  so  justly)  that  each  man 
finds  true  the  things  he  believes  in  and  wills  for ;  why 
should  not  every  man  find  his  religion  true,  in  so  far 
as  he  has  indeed  set  his  heart  upon  it  and  made  sacri- 
fices for  it  ?  However  this  may  be,  the  religious  objects 
(the  predicates  given  by  religion  to  reality)  stand  at  a 
pass  of  intellectual  equipoise :  it  may  well  seem  that 
some  other  faculty  must  enter  in  to  give  determination 
to  reason  at  the  point  where  reason  halts,  without  decid- 
ing voice  of  its  own.  The  birth  of  the  idea  of  God  in 
the  mind  —  the  judgment  "  Reality  is  living,  divine,  a 
God  exists*'  — is  so  subtle,  like  the  faintest  breath  of 
the  spirit  upon  the  face  of  the  waters,  that  no  look 

1  The  earliest  ideas  and  names  for  the  Deity  seem  to  have  been  rather 
adjectives  than  nouns.  Among  the  Aryans,  the  divine  was  expressed  as 
"the  shining,"  "the  illustrious"  ;  among  Malays  and  Indians  and  very 
generally  elsewhere,  "  the  wonderful,"  "  the  powerful,"  "  the  immense." 


144    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

within  can  tell  whether  God  is  here  revealing  himself  to 
man,  or  man  creating  God. 

It  is  because  of  this  position  of  subtle  equilibrium 
that  the  religious  consciousness  is  evanescent ;  faith  is 
unstable  as  empirical  knowledge  is  not.  Though  at  any 
time  I  find  my  world  sacred,  it  only  needs  a  touch  of 
passivity  on  my  part  and  it  will  again  become  secular : 
I  cannot  recover  nor  understand  its  former  worth.  My 
faith  in  God  is  subject  to  fluctuation  as  my  faith  in 
other  objects  is  not,  even  though  these  other  objects  are 
equally  inaccessible  (as  my  faith  in  China  or  in  the  con- 
servation of  energy).  And  noteworthy  about  this  fluc- 
tuation is  that  it  passes  from  extreme  to  extreme,  not 
pausing  in  the  intermediate  stages  of  probability :  the 
existence  of  God  is  to  me  either  wholly  certain  or  wholly 
absurd.  Likewise  of  immortality :  it  seems  to  me  at 
times  that  a  man  is  a  fool  to  believe  it,  at  other  times 
that  a  man  is  a  fool  not  to  believe  it.  I  have  no  power 
of  weighing  shades  of  probability  in  these  matters.  It 
must  be  so,  it  can't  be  so :  these  are  the  only  degrees  of 
which  my  own  religious  faith  is  capable.  But  alterna- 
tives like  these  belong  rather  to  the  will  or  disposition 
of  the  spirit  than  to  the  estimating  mind.  And  further, 
the  one  thing  which  is  most  sure  to  dispel  faith  and 
substitute  the  secular  world-picture  is  precisely  intellec- 
tual scrutiny.  Faith  is  not  only  difficult  for  reason ;  it  is 
distinctly  diffident  to  ward  reason.  Its  origin,  then,  and 
its  firmness  must  be  due  to  some  other  power,  presum- 
ably to  will. 

It  would  help  our  thought  on  this  point  if  we  could 
trace  the  mental  processes  in  which  the  idea  of  God  first 


THE  WILL  AS   A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH  145 

arises  in  human  consciousness.  It  is  more  than  doubt- 
ful whether  any  such  tracing  is  possible;  and  largely 
because  of  the  circumstances  which  we  have  pointed  out : 
the  thought  of  God  comes  and  goes ;  is  often  lost  and  often 
recovered,  both  in  racial  and  in  individual  experience  ;  it 
appears  also  in  various  ways  to  various  minds.  No 
historical  nor  typical  origin  of  the  belief  in  God  can  be 
shown.  Nevertheless,  taking  as  a  beginning  a  mood  of 
secularity  which  often  recurs  in  human  experience,  there 
may  be  some  measure  of  typical  psychological  truth  in 
such  a  picture  as  this  which  follows : 

There  is  a  grim  and  menacing  aspect  of  reality  which 
remains  commonly  unemphatic  as  our  lives  go  but  which 
events  may  at  any  time  uncover.  We  are  obliged  to 
witness  this  vast  Whole,  of  which  we  speak  so  easily, 
threatening  existence  or  destroying  the  things  that  make 
our  existence  valuable.  Against  such  threats  our  usual 
methods  of  protection  avail  exactly  nothing.  The  mer- 
ciless processes  of  nature,  of  disease  and  death,  of  fate 
generally,  are  not  impressed  by  entreaty  or  by  effort, 
are  not  to  be  beaten  off  with  clubs  nor  frightened  away 
by  shrieks  and  gestures  of  defiance.  All  these  weapons 
will  be  tried ;  and  trial  best  convinces  of  futility.  Fear 
and  hope  normally  inspire  action ;  fear  and  hope  show 
them  selves  alike  empty  in  this  situation.  That  with  which 
one  has  to  do  is  reality  itself ;  and  toward  this  only  some 
less  external  attitude  can  be  significant.  But  in  the 
human  creature  at  bay  there  are  other  depths ;  the  recog- 
nition of  futility  is  the  beginning  of  human  adequacy. 
For  despair  ends  by  calling  out  a  certain  touch  of  resent- 
ment, —  resentment  having  a  tinge  of  self-assertion  in 
it,  even  of  moral  requirement  directed  against  reality. 


146    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

Such  a  being  as  I,  by  virtue  of  this  very  power  of  real- 
izing my  situation,  by  virtue  of  my  whole-idea  and 
my  self-consciousness,  has  some  claim  to  urge  upon  the 
reality  that  surrounds  me,  threatening;  the  reality  which, 
after  all,  has  brought  me  forth.  Though  by  the  slight- 
est movement  of  this  deep-lying  sense  of  right,  one  does, 
in  effect,  demand  justice  of  his  creator :  and  thereby,  with- 
out premeditation,  finds  himself  with  the  idea  of  Deity 
already  constituted  and  possessed.  For  toward  what  can 
moral  resentment  and  demand  be  addressed  but  to  a  liv- 
ing and  moral  Being  ?  In  that  deep  impulse  of  self- 
assertion  there  was  involved,  though  I  knew  it  not,  the 
will  that  my  reality  should  be  a  living  and  responsible 
reality.  And  in  time  I  shall  find  that  in  imputing  this 
quality  to  my  world,  I  have  already  lifted  the  burden  of 
those  anxieties,  so  helpless  upon  their  own  plane.  The 
God-idea  thus  appears  as  a  postulate  of  our  moral  con- 
sciousness :  an  original  object  of  resolve  which  tends  to 
make  itself  good  in  experience. 

For  the  proof  of  this  new-found  or  new-made  relation 
to  reality,  expressed  in  my  God-idea,  is  this :  that  in  meet- 
ing my  world  divinely  it  shows  itself  divine.  It  supports 
my  postulate.  And  without  such  act  of  will,  no  discov- 
ery of  divinity  could  take  place.  Men  cannot  be  worthy 
of  reverence,  until  I  meet  them  with  reverence :  for  my 
reverence  is  the  dome  under  which  alone  their  possible 
greatness  can  stand  and  live.  Of  the  world  likewise, — 
it  can  have  no  divinity  but  only  materiality  or  menac- 
ing insensibility,  unless  I  throw  over  it  the  category 
under  whose  dome  its  holiness  can  rise  visible  and 
actual.  God  cannot  live,  as  divine  and  beneficent,  ex- 
cept in  the  opportunity  created  by  our  good-will :  but 


THE  WILL   AS   A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH  147 

given   the   good-will,  reality  is   such  as  will  become 
indeed  divine. 

In  accord  with  this  conjecture  as  to  the  position  of 
religious  truth,  namely  that  it  is  determined  by  the 
movement  of  will-to-believe,  is  an  old  observation  of  reli- 
gious experience.  It  is  written  that  he  who  seeks  finds : 
the  connection  between  seeking  and  finding  is  infallible. 
Such  infallible  connection  may  be  many-wise  under- 
stood, but  it  may  be  thus  understood,  that  the  seeking 
brings  the  finding  with  it.  "  Thou  wouldst  not  seek  me 
hadst  thou  not  already  found  me,"  said  Pascal :  and  to 
Sabatier  this  thought  came  "  like  a  flash  of  light  .  .  . 
the  solution  of  a  problem  that  had  long  appeared  insol- 
uble." 1  The  religiousness  of  man's  nature  is  the  whole 
substance  of  his  revelation.  Whatever  we  impute  to 
the  world  comes  back  to  us  as  a  quality  pre-resident 
there  —  is  not  this  the  whole  illusion  of  reality  ? 
Impute  then  to  the  world  a  living  beneficence :  the  world 
will  not  reject  this  imputation,  will  be  even  as  you  have 
willed  it.2  Your  belief  becomes  (as  Fichte  held)  an 
evidence  of  your  character  —  not  of  your  learning.  He 
who  waits  his  assent  till  God  is  proved  to  him,  will 
never  find  Him.  But  he  who  seeks  finds  —  has  already 
found. 

In  all  these  respects  there  is  the  strongest  resemblance 
between  the  religious  idea  and  human  value.  The  world 

1  Outlines  of  a  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  32. 

2  The  Chinese  have  long  had  a  saying  "  If  you  believe  in  the  gods,  the 
gods  exist :  if  you  do  not  believe  in  them  they  do  not  exist."   Whence  prag- 
matism as  a  theory  of  metaphysics  may  be  said  to  be  of  Chinese  origin* 
See  A.  H.  Smith,  Chinese  Characteristics,  p.  301. 


148     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

is  consistent  without  Deity  (so  it  is  said) ;  the  world  is 
consistent  also  without  beauty,  or  other  charm.  Before 
reason,  religious  assurance  is  evanescent:  so  also  with 
any  pleasure  or  other  worth  when  by  introspection,  or 
analysis,  we  determine  to  seize  its  secret.  The  world- 
body  to  the  eye  of  Fact  is  grey,  even  dead  with  all  its 
working ;  if  it  is  to  be  reanimated  with  worth,  it  must 
be  by  that  miracle  which  continually  repeats  itself  in 
our  experience  —  the  Spirit  breathes  upon  it  from  its 
own  resources  the  breath  of  life.  Thus  the  birth  of 
value  and  the  birth  of  God-faith  are  alike  ;  as  indeed 
we  have  every  reason  to  believe,  if  the  conclusions  of 
the  last  chapter  are  valid :  is  it  not  possible  that  they 
are  the  same  thing,  —  in  both  cases  the  work  of  an 
ultimate  good-will  toward  our  world?  If  the  union 
which  we  have  proposed  between  idea  and  feeling 
is  indeed  so  intimate  and  equal  that  "  without  feel- 
ing the  ideas  are  false  ;  even  as  without  the  idea  the 
feelings  are  meaningless,"  it  is  at  least  possible  that 
some  deeper  faculty  fundamental  to  both  idea  and 
feeling  is  here  giving  laws  to  reality  itself :  deciding 
what  the  truth,  and  therewith  the  value,  of  my  world 
shall  be. 

A  new  conception  of  faith  appears  here :  faith  is  more 
than  passive  feeling,  more  also  than  the  sight  which 
seizes  upon  the  reality  of  the  world  as  it  is  —  faith  is 
the  loyal  determination  and  resolve  which  sees  the  world 
as  it  is  capable  of  becoming,  and  commits  its  fortunes  to 
the  effort  to  make  real  what  it  thus  sees.  The  religious 
creed  or  world-view  becomes  a  postulate  rather  than 
either  an  empirical  discovery  or  a  revelation  to  be 
obediently  received. 


THE  WILL  AS   A  MAKER   OF  TRUTH  149 

I  know  not  whether  this  presentation  of  a  voluntaristic 
foundation  for  religious  truth  has  been  able  to  provoke 
any  acceptance  on  the  part  of  the  reader :  it  is  a  para- 
doxical doctrine,  yet  it  has  in  it  great  power,  and 
especially  great  relief  for  the  difficult  situation  of  the 
religious  idea.  To  my  mind,  I  must  admit,  nothing 
more  illuminating  has  ever  been  put  forward  than 
just  such  interpretation  of  many  a  religious  doctrine ; 
nothing  truer  to  the  way  in  which  religious  picturing 
and  myth-building  does  actually  take  place  in  the 
human  consciousness. 

Taking  religious  ideas  literally  and  fixedly  is,  in  fact, 
a  modern  and  Western  peculiarity.  The  Oriental  mind 
realizes  that  the  spiritual  atmosphere  in  which  either 
men  or  gods  may  breathe,  must  be  created  ;  it  knows 
nothing  of  empirical  truth  in  matters  of  religion,  truth 
passively  taken ;  and  postulate  joins  hands  with  poetry 
in  constituting  the  medium  in  which  all  spirituality  may 
live.  (The  freedom  of  the  religious  poem  or  myth  or 
parable  may  be  regarded  as  the  will-to-believe  at  play.)  ^  *" 
The  Oriental  mind  speaks  understandingly  of  miracles 
and  virgin  births,  because  it  sees  in  them  poetic  means 
of  lifting  what  it  will  pronounce  divine  above  the  com- 
monplace of  profane  event  and  indolent  human  charac- 
ter. We  also,  of  the  West,  have  our  own  style  of  poetry 
and  imagination  ;  of  which  we  see  well  enough  that  it 
must  be  understood  with  imagination  and  humor  also 
after  its  kind.  But  we  approach,  in  religious  matters, 
the  poetry  of  the  Orient  often  with  a  literal-minded 
savagery,  which  must  accuse  us  of  some  deeper  defect 
than  simple  lack  of  humor  —  a  lack,  namely,  of  spir- 
ituality itself,  which  knows  that  the  language  of  the 


150    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

spirit  must  be  read  by  the  spirit  also,  and  is  not  to  be 
rudely  transferred  into  empirical  text-books  of  physics 
and  of  medicine.  I  do  not  doubt  that  in  religion  as  in 
human  experience  generally,  each  will  sets  the  level  of 
its  own  life,  determines  in  large  measure  its  own  destiny, 
and  helps  to  create  spiritual  reality  for  all  other  human 
life.  A  faith  without  a  large  ingredient  of  will,  is  no 
faith  at  all. 

Nevertheless,  I  must  believe  that  the  great  heave  of 
the  West  to  get  a  literal  and  objective  grip  upon  its 
major  religious  objects  is  an  advance,  and  not  a  retro- 
gression. We  only  drive  men  to  make  their  religion  all 
prose,  when  we  threaten  to  make  it  all  poetry  and  postu- 
late. For  poetry  and  postulate  are  pioneer  stages  of 
truth,  and  live  by  the  ounce  of  literality  and  truth- 
independent  that  is  at  their  heart.  The  large  scope  for 
our  own  will  and  creation  is  not  denied :  the  world  is 
such  as  to  make  this  creativity  possible.  But  then  our 
religion  attaches  itself  to  the  literal  truth  that  the 
world  is  such,  already  such,  as  to  allow  these  develop- 
ments and  to  respond  thus  sensitively  to  our  acts  of 
will.  This  prior  element  becomes  our  religious  creed  ; 
the  region  of  our  wills  to  create  becomes  the  province 
of  art  and  of  morals. 

The  destiny  of  religious  truth  to  become  universal 
and  imperative  must  detach  it  at  last  from  all  salient 
subjectivity ;  must  state  and  define  the  scope  of  our 
creative  possibilities  ivithin  the  frame  of  that  which 
independently  Is.  Literality  is  an  accomplishment  of 
deepening  self-consciousness  ;  it  marks  an  achievement 
of  personal  equilibrium  and  stability,  which  is  able  to 
recognize  corresponding  stability  and  identity  in  the 


THE   WILL  AS   A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH  151 

world  with  which  it  deals,  —  not  as  limiting  its  own 
freedom,  but  as  upholding  it.  It  has  required  a  Western 
integrity  and  self-respect  to  submit  in  obedience  to  the 
observation  of  Nature ;  it  is  this  same  integrity  which 
requires  in  its  religious  objects  that  to  which  it  must 
be  obedient,  as  the  basis  of  whatever  creativity  and 
command  it  will  claim. 

Early  religious  objects  are  like  play-objects  of  chil- 
dren, whose  character  is  partly  real,  and  partly  conferred 
by  the  player.  This,  says  the  child,  shall  be  a  soldier, — 
this  a  good  soldier,  and  this  a  bad  one  —  and  behold 
they  are  such.  To  hold  interest,  playthings  must  become 
more  autonomous  as  the  child  grows,  more  locomotive, 
more  realistic  and  difficult  to  manage.  In  time  they  are 
all  to  be  displaced  by  objects  of  the  same  name,  —  but 
real.  As  for  these  real  objects,  they  are  more  danger- 
ous, more  refractory ;  they  have  independent  inner  pur- 
poses of  their  own ;  our  success  in  dealing  with  them  is 
uncertain,  whereas  with  the  play-objects,  whose  inner 
thoughts  were  such  only  as  we  imputed  to  them,  our 
success  was  a  forgone  conclusion.  Play  is  the  necessary 
prologue  to  life,  because,  chiefly,  it  is  necessary  to  meet 
life  with  the  habit  of  success.  Not  wholly  different  may 
it  have  been  with  the  maturation  of  the  religious  life  in 
human  history.  Let  the  religious  instinct  have  its  full 
swing  and  success  in  its  traffic  with  divinities  and  world- 
auspices  which  are  in  large  part  the  work  of  its  own 
will,  if  not  of  its  own  hand.  Thereby  may  it  be  prepared 
to  meet  with  the  temper  of  success  the  ear  of  a  Deity 
wholly  himself)  wholly  identical  in  his  own  counsel. 
Christianity  marks  the  first  great  inburst  of  the  Orient 
into  consciousness  of  the  literal  world,  with  its  literal 


152     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

human  problem  and  world  sorrow,  the  first  worship  of 
the  literal  God  of  that  world.  The  work  of  literalizing 
our  creed  is  never  to  be  finished  ;  for  imagination  and 
postulate  move  more  rapidly  than  the  leaven  of  objec- 
tivity can  spread ;  but  they  move  under  the  protection 
of  the  major  literalities.  Upon  these  major  literalities 
religion  must  henceforth  and  forever  be  built.  For  ma- 
turity is  marked  by  the  preference  to  be  defeated  rather 
than  have  a  subjective  success.  We  as  mature  persons 
can  worship  only  that  which  we  are  compelled  to  wor- 
ship. If  we  are  offered  a  man-made  God  and  a  self- 
answering  prayer,  we  will  rather  have  no  God  and  no 
prayer.  There  can  be  no  valid  worship  except  that  in 
which  man  is  involuntarily  bent  by  the  presence  of  the 
Most  Real,  beyond  his  will. 

The  problem  of  loyalty  in  religion  is  not  different 
from  the  problem  of  loyalty  elsewhere.  It  is  true  that 
we  cannot  be  loyal  to  any  tie  that  has  been  imposed 
upon  us  without  our  own  consent — this  is  the  first  prem- 
ise alike  of  love  and  of  government.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  cannot  be  loyal  to  any  tie  that  has  been  fabri- 
cated by  a  needless  stroke  of  our  own  will.  Any  object 
which  can  hold  our  allegiance  must  therefore  be  at  the 
same  time  an  object  of  free  choice,  and  an  object  of 
necessary  choice.  In  the  expressions  of  romantic  love 
it  is  hard  to  tell  which  is  uppermost :  that  this  bond 
between  the  lovers  is  wholly  their  own,  their  exclusive 
knowledge  and  will,  the  highest  work  of  their  own  free- 
dom ;  or  that  this  bond  is  the  work  of  Fate,  such  as  the 
stars  of  heaven  from  all  time  have  destined  to  effect. 
Unless  God  is  that  being  for  whom  the  soul  is  likewise 
inescapably  destined  by  the  eternal  nature  of  things, 


THE  WILL  AS   A   MAKER  OF  TRUTH  153 

the  worship  of  God  will  get  no  sufficient  hold  on  the 
human  heart.  Religion  is  indeed  a  manifestation  of  the 
generous  and  creative  side  of  human  nature;  but  its 
generosity  is  not  that  of  creation  out  of  whole  cloth,  — 
it  is  the  generosity  of  the  spirit  ready  to  acknowledge 
the  full  otherness  of  its  objects,  and  to  live  divinely  in 
a  world  which  is  divine. 

It  is  still  possible  that  reality  in  its  whole  constitution 
is  a  matter  of  choice,  though  not  of  our  choice.  The 
results  of  your  choice  become  data  to  me;  your  will  is 
my  fact:  it  may  be  similarly  that  everything  which  is 
fact  to  our  human  consciousness  is  the  creative  choice 
of  a  supreme  Will.  On  such  a  supposition,  voluntaristic 
views  of  reality  would  be  true  for  God,  but  for  no  other. 
It  is  true  that  creativity  is  the  essential  quality  of  the 
will;  and  in  the  constitution  of  reality,  man's  will  is  to 
cooperate  with  whatever  other  creative  will  there  may 
be  in  the  universe.  But  man  has  religion  because  he  is  G,CX 
not  wholly  identical  with  God;  and  his  religion  will  be  ^•*^o#v 
founded  upon  that  relation  to  reality  in  which  he  is  less 
creative  than  dependent, —  or  more  exactly,  in  which 
his  creatorship  is  a  result  of  his  dependence.1 

For  in  truth,  our  human  life  is  only  an  apprenticeship 
in  creativity.  The  small  launches  of  postulation  which 
we  make  depend  on  being  quickly  caught  up  and  floated 
by  a  tide  of  corroboration  hailing  from  beyond  ourselves. 

1  There  are  two  uses  of  the  word  independent  which  need  to  be  dis- 
tinguished. One  kind  of  independence  is  mutual,  a  symmetrical  relation: 
A  is  independent  of  B,  B  is  independent  of  A.  The  other  kind  is  not 
symmetrical:  A  is  independent  of  B,  B  is  dependent  upon  A.  It  is  in  this 
latter  sense  that  we  refer  to  '  the  independent  variable,'  in  mathematical 
and  physical  systems.  Reality  has  an  element  of  the  latter  kiud  of  inde- 
pendence of  finite  purposes,  not  of  the  former. 


154    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

We  leap ;  but  unless  we  are  soon  borne  up  from  beyond 
we  make  but  a  sorry  flight.  And  however  far  my  crea- 
tivity extends,  my  own  creations  never  become  truth  for 
me,  until  seen  through  the  eye  of  another  than  myself 
they  are  recognized  by  him  as  fact,  and  so  made  valid 
for  me  also.  My  best  creativity  must  win  the  consent 
of  the  independent  before  it  can  take  the  status  of  truth, 
even  in  my  own  eyes.  The  word  truth  has  in  it  some 
reference  not  to  be  suppressed  to  a  wholly  other  than 
myself,  to  a  will  wholly  other  than  mine,  as  a  condition 
of  the  reality  of  anything  created.  Thus,  all  finite  crea- 
tivity contemplates  this  other,  which  by  implication  is 
not  a  product  of  its  will ;  it  is  this  radically  independent 
reality  which  religion  seeks  to  know,  and  which  alone  it 
can  worship. 

How,  then,  is  religious  truth  to  be  known?  Are  the 
realities  of  which  religion  speaks  to  be  discovered  in 
experience?  Or  are  they  matters  of  hypothesis,  or  of 
inference,  that  is  to  say,  of  reason?  Our  answer  has  been 
implied  in  what  has  gone  before:  religious  truth  is 
founded  upon  experience.  In  that  imaginary  picture  of 
ours  of  the  psychological  birth  of  the  idea  of  God  — 
in  which  it  seemed  to  us  as  if  our  resentment,  a  stroke 
of  moral  will,  had  spontaneously  made  or  recognized 
our  world  a  living  and  responsible  being — we  may  dis- 
cern beside  the  stroke  of  will  an  experience  of  discovery.1 
If  there  is  any  knowledge  of  God,  it  must  be  in  some 

1  Of  some  such  subtle  but  veritable  experience  I  believe  that  all 
"revelation"  is  built.  Revelation  is  knowledge  real  and  empirical  (i.e., 
received  in  relative  passivity),  which  is  more  certain  in  itself  than  in  its 
assignable  connections  with  the  main  body  of  experience  The  logic  of 
the  matter  is  worked  out  in  Parts  IV  and  VI. 


THE  WILL  AS  A  MAKER  OF  TRUTH  156 

such  way  a  matter  of  experience.  This  implies  that  our 
experience  of  reality  is  not  confined  to  sensation.  Sen- 
sation itself  also  brings  us  into  contact  with  a  reality 
which  is  independent  of  our  will ;  sensation  is  a  meta- 
physical experience.  And  religious  faith  must  be  built 
upon  an  experience  not  wholly  different  from  sensation  ; 
but  a  super-sensible  experience,  like  our  experience  of 
our  human  fellows ;  an  experience  which  recognizes  the 
reality  given  in  sensation  for  what,  in  its  true  nature, 
it  is. 

And  whatever  is  matter  of  experience  must  also 
become,  in  time,  matter  of  reason ;  for  reason  is  but  the 
process  of  finding,  by  some  secure  path  of  connection, 
a  given  experience  from  the  standpoint  of  other  expe- 
rience assumed  as  better  known.  The  proof  of  God's 
existence  is  (as  Hegel  put  it)  but  the  lifting  of  the  mind 
to  God  from  out  of  the  affairs  of  secular  business.  Such 
proof,  or  mental  direction,  is  called  for,  not  because 
the  religious  objects  are  inaccessible  to  experience,  but 
rather  because  they  are  accessible  ;  and  being  found  in 
experience,  it  is  necessary  to  establish  their  systematic 
relations  with  the  rest.  It  is  through  reason  that  the 
original  and  evanescent  experience  of  God  becomes 
established  as  veritable  truth. 

This,  then,  is  the  result  to  which  our  labors  so  far 
have  led.  We  cannot  find  a  footing  for  religion  in  feel- 
ing: we  must  look  for  valid  religious  ideas.  And  these 
ideas  are  not  to  be  taken  at  liberty,  nor  deduced  from 
the  conception  of  any  necessary  purpose  :  we  are  to  seek 
the  truth  of  religion  obediently  in  experience  as  some- 
thing which  is  established  in  independence  of  our  finite 
wills.  So  far  we  have  done  no  more  than  orient  our 


156     RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

search.     The  task  itself  we  shall  take  up  in  a  later  part 
of  this  book. 

In  the  meantime,  while  voluntarism  cannot  define  truth 
for  us,  religious  truth  least  of  all,  it  remains  the  most  im- 
portant and  valuable  of  all  tests  of  truth  and  ballasts  of 
judgment  about  truth.  The  question,  "  What  kind  of 
world  would  best  satisfy  the  requirements  of  our  wills  ?" 
can  never  finally  determine  what  kind  of  world  we,  in 
reality,  have.  But  such  questions  may  go  far  toward 
clearing  our  mind  about  those  requirements  themselves ; 
they  may  give  some  not-unimportant  hints  of  what  we 
have  to  expect  of  reality.  To  this  pragmatic  type  of 
inference  we  shall  devote  the  next  few  studies. 


NOTE  ON  PRAGMATIC  IDEALISM 

IN  the  foregoing  chapter  we  have  appealed  from  that  which 
we  can  voluntarily  determine  to  that  which  independently 
Is,  as  the  necessary  basis  of  religious  truth.  And  this  appeal 
is  on  the  whole  valid  and  intelligible.  But  voluntarism  may 
recur  to  its  most  searching  and  general  question — a  question 
which  we  have  already  dealt  with  by  implication l  but  which 
may  now  with  advantage  be  considered  by  itself.  It  may 
require  of  us  an  account  of  that  independence  which  we  expect 
to  discover,  doubting  whether  anything  in  this  universe  can 
be  essentially  independent  of  any  other,  doubting  whether  any 
real  object  of  ours  is  independent  of  ourselves,  doubting 
whether  in  the  last  resort  those  most  real  objects  of  our  best 
maturity  are  not  also  there,  in  all  their  inner  freedom  and 
autonomy,  by  dint  of  some  deeper  will  of  ours,  some  necessary 
or  absolute  will.  Have  we  not  even  now  said  that  we  must 
desire  that  our  religious  objects  have  such  independence,  that 
we  need  it  as  a  support  for  our  loyalty  ?  and  in  confessing 
these  needs  have  we  not  admitted  that  this  independence  may 
still  be  regarded  as  the  free  deed  of  our  own  deepest  will, 
and  so  no  absolute  independence  ? 

It  is  in  experience  that  we  meet  with  the  supposedly  inde- 
pendent realities  of  nature  and  society  with  that  total  volume 
of  Fact  which  is  there  whether  we  will  or  not.  But  experience 
has  long  been  known  to  be  no  such  passive  affair  as  it  seems. 
Idealism  has  made  clear  to  us  how  much  the  mind  must  con- 
tribute to  make  its  experience  what  it  is  :  how  little  is  actually 
given,  how  much  is  made  on  the  basis  of  this  little  —  or  noth- 
ing —  from  outside.  We  think  we  find  our  fellow  men,  for 
example,  as  independent  metaphysical  entities ;  we  treat  them 

1  Both  in  the  above  chapter  and  in  chapter  x,  in  discussing  the 
meaning  of  ideas. 


158    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

as  if  they  were  such.  But  even  as  we  observed  how  far  the 
qualities  and  characters  of  men  are  determined  by  our  own 
resolve,  so  we  may  now  see,  striking  deeper,  that  their  very 
metaphysical  selfhood,  their  individuality,  is  real  by  consent 
rather  than  by  given  fact.  Neither  they  nor  we  find  given 
any  substantial  soul  or  individual  in  this  world,  whether  theirs 
or  our  own;  but  our  purpose  is  to  live  in  a  world  of  real 
persons,  and  so  far  as  possible  to  be  real  persons  ourselves. 
According  to  this  necessary  aspiration  we  act,  and  cannot  help 
acting.  But  in  its  nature  our  whole  environment  of  "  meta- 
physical reality  "  is  no  independent  fact,  passively  received, 
but  a  determination  of  our  own  absolute  will. 

Such,  in  brief,  are  the  considerations  pressed  upon  us  by 
volitional  idealism,  especially  in  the  form  in  which  that  ideal- 
ism is  presented  by  Fichte,  and  in  our  own  time  by  Royce, 
by  Miinsterberg,  by  Rickert,  and  others. l  There  is  nothing 
true  for  any  subject  in  which  it  is  not  possible  to  trace  the  sign 
of  the  subject  and  of  the  deepest  will  of  the  subject.  Reality 
itself  can  have  no  other  independence  of  the  thinker  than  that 
which  he  wills  it  to  have. 

But  valuable  and  morally  important  as  all  this  is,  to  know 
how  much  of  what  we  passingly  regard  as  independent  Fact 
is  in  the  making  of  our  own  wills,  the  case  of  the  (pragmatic) 
idealist  is  not  —  I  must  think  —  complete  ;  nor  can  it  be  com- 
pleted. There  may  be  no  assignable  feature  of  my  world  in 
which  I  cannot  trace  the  work  of  my  own  will :  it  still  remains 
possible  that  there  may  be  no  assignable  feature  of  my  world 
in  which  I  cannot  trace  also  the  work  of  something  not-my- 
will.  Let  me  illustrate  this  situation : 

Independence  may  be  symbolized  by  discontinuity  in  geom- 
etry, —  let  us  say,  by  a  point  that  stands  off  by  itself.  There 
1  For  our  present  argument  the  differences  between  these  thinkers, 
important  as  they  are,  need  not  be  discussed.  A  summary  statement  of 
the  position  in  question  may  be  found  in  Royce,  The  World  and  the  Individ- 
ual, vol.  i,  pp.  320-342.  The  position  itself  may  be  labelled  voluntaristie 
idealism,  or  pragmatic  idealism,  or,  as  Royce  calls  it  in  his  last  book, 
absolute  pragmatism.  (William  James  and  Other  Essays,  p.  254.  J 


ON  PRAGMATIC   IDEALISM  159 

are  no  independent  points  in  a  circle  :  every  one  is  perfectly 
bound  and  held  by  the  central  rule.  In  ellipses,  there  is  a 
struggle  apart  of  centers,  so  to  speak,  —  a  certain  mutual 
independence  in  the  two  focal  points,  which  loosens  the  attach- 
ment of  the  curve  to  either.  The  central  government  of  other 
curves  as  defined  by  their  'equations,'  is  variously  strong: 
in  some  of  them,  single  points  become  detached  ;  in  others, 
whole  regions  break  out  in  double  boundaries.  Wherever  a 
hump  or  projection  or  departure  from  the  perfect  round  is 
visible,  there  is  the  sign  of  rebellion,  of  incipient  independence. 
In  the  angle,  we  have  a  complete  rupture  of  central  control ; 
two  independent  equations  describe  the  two  independent  lines. 
With  this  picture  of  dependence  and  independence  in  mind, 
we  might  undertake  with  idealistic  eyes  to  examine  the 
shapes  of  natural  objects.  In  nature,  our  supposed  ideal- 

ist might  report,  we  find  no  straight  lines  and  no  angles: 
everywhere,  if  you  examine  closely  enough  you  find  the  round, 
the  mark  of  subjection  to  some  center.  In  any  given  organism 
you  find  repeated  everywhere  the  same  curve  —  in  eye,  in 
nostril,  in  spinal  and  muscular  wave  —  the  same  reference  of 
every  element  to  the  type-cell  and  its  central  forces.  This  is 
the  report  of  the  idealistic  eye,  which  is  always  on  the  lookout 
for  signs  of  centrality  ;  and  which  may  truly  say  that  there 
is  nothing  real  and  concrete  which  does  not  betray  these  signs 
in  every  nameable  feature.  But  now,  look  at  the 

same  shapes  with  other  eyes,  with  those  of  an  imagined  real- 
ist, believer  in  the  independent  reality.  Perhaps  there  are  no 
straight  lines  in  nature,  he  might  report,  but  on  the  other 
hand  there  are  no  circles ;  and  the  higher  the  effort  of  nature, 
the  less  is  the  circle  apparent.  Nature,  in  fact,  progresses  out 
of  roundness  toward  angularity.  Primitive  animals,  and  sim- 
ple orbits,  may  be  nearly  round ;  but  no  developed  animal  is 
round.  In  elliptical  and  elongated  shapes  we  see  signs  of 
rebellion,  a  new  center  struggling  apart  from  the  original  one. 
Humps,  horns,  heads,  tails,  autonomous  internal  organs,  are 
so  many  evidences  of  promising  home-rule.  In  animals  which 


160    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND   RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

we  regard  as  highly  developed  we  find  actual  corners  and 
discontinuities  of  line :  —  see  the  square-blocked  blooded  bull; 
compare  the  man  with  the  infant ;  note  the  loose  play  of  limb 
in  quadrupeds  as  compared  with  the  tighter  bound  organs  of 
bird  and  fish.  So  in  the  works  of  art  that  follow  nature ;  con- 
trast the  moon-faced  people  drawn  by  a  school-boy  with  the 
cross-hatched  sketches  of  any  master  hand.  Or  observe  the 
line  of  progress  from  the  round  huts  of  the  ancient  Saxon, 
the  igloos  of  the  Eskimo,  the  charcoal-burner's  huts  of  Scot- 
land, the  Indian  wigwam,  and  the  like,  —  from  these  to  the 
square  walls  of  the  romanized  English  dwelling  and  our 
modern  house.  Roundness  is,  in  fact,  the  hopeless  thing  in 
nature.  So  far  as  the  organism  is  round  and  continuous 
within  itself,  in  so  far  it  must  live  upon  its  own  resources  and 
inertia,  and  has  the  promise  of  death.  But  wherever  it  crosses 
reality,  even  the  most  primitive  of  organisms,  wherever  it 
touches  the  sources  of  its  continued  life  —  in  eating,  in  know- 
ing, in  giving  birth  —  there  is  a  breach  in  its  body- wall ;  there 
it  confesses  discontinuity  and  dependence  upon  the  independ- 
ent. So  the  report  of  the  realistic  eye,  on  the  lookout  for 
marks  of  independence,  might  answer  and  supplement  the 
report  of  idealism.  To  every  sign  of  dependence  which  the 
idealist  can  show,  the  realist  can  show  a  corresponding  sign  of 
independence.  We  can  decide,  on  such  showing,  neither  for 
one  nor  for  the  other. 

To  come  now  from  our  illustration  to  the  matter  itself :  It 
is  not  enough  for  the  idealist  to  show  that  the  mark  of  the 
ego  and  its  purposes  is  on  every  object  of  knowledge,  and  on 
every  phase  of  the  object ;  he  must  also  consider  whether  the 
mark  of  the  non-ego  is  not  equally  pervasive.  In  so  far  as  he 
fails  to  do  this,  he  leaves  us  dissatisfied.  His  argument  savors 
much  of  the  logic  by  which  Thomas  Hobbes  proved  that  by 
virtue  of  the  social  contract,  all  acts  of  the  Leviathan  are  in 
reality  my  own  acts,  expressions  of  my  own  will  —  no  matter 
what  the  Leviathan  may  do,  short  of  threatening  my  own  safety 
or  existence.  There  is  a  Leviathan  of  our  living  universe  also, 


ON   PRAGMATIC   IDEALISM  161 

to  whom  we  are  bound  perhaps  by  some  cosmic  'contract,' 
i.e.,  by  some  necessary  consent  of  our  absolute  wills  —  pre- 
sumably further  a  wholly  benevolent  Leviathan  :  still  his  en- 
actments strike  upon  my  consciousness  with  the  novelty  of 
independence  —  fruits  of  a  purpose  which  may  include  mine, 
but  is  not  included  in  mine. 

It  is  in  vain  also  that  pragmatic  idealism  shows  that  the 
universe  is  everywhere  what  I  would  will  it  to  be  if  my  will 
were  wholly  self-knowing ;  or  that  when  the  scientific  mind 
submits  itself  empirically  to  the  independent  fact,  it  expresses 
not  alone  its  own  purpose  but  its  harmony  with  a  great  spiritual 
fabric  of  conspiring  purposes :  these  things  may  be  true,  but 
they  do  not  answer  our  question.  There  is  nothing  in  reality 
but  that  my  will  helps  to  make  it  what  in  my  experience  it 
becomes :  but  is  there  anything  in  reality  that  I  could  wholly 
have  created  ?  is  there  anything  that  my  purposes  can  wholly 
define  ?  The  universe  fulfills  my  will ;  but  it  is  not  definable 
as  the  fulfilment  of  my  will :  it  is  That  Which  fulfills  my  will 
—  and  much  more  besides  ;  first  fulfilling  its  own  independent 
will.  The  universe  has  its  own  soul,  and  its  own  counsel  which 
is  not  mine.  This  is  its  independence.1 

We  admit  the  positive  side  of  the  idealistic  argument ;  what- 
ever is  real  for  us  is  real  with  our  consent  and  cooperation. 
As  for  its  negative  part,  that  nothing  in  reality  is  independent 
of  our  will,  we  would  turn  tables  on  the  idealistic  argument. 
In  denying  the  reality  of  this  independence,  does  the  idealist 
not  implicitly  acknowledge  that  very  independence  ?  For  he 
means  to  make  a  statement  to  which  we  must  assent,  consult- 
ing not  first  our  wills  and  purposes,  but  solely  the  truth  as  it 
is.  By  reality,  idealist  and  realist  alike  mean  that  which  first 
is,  and  afterward  is  in  accord  with  our  purposes. 

He  who  says  that  individuality  is  a  postulate,  not  a  fact ; 

1  This  point  is  further  discussed  and  illustrated  in  the  explanatory 
essay  "The  knowledge  of  independent  reality."  The  geometrical 
illustration  above  used  was  originally  a  part  of  the  article  from  which 
this  essay  was  taken. 


162    RELIGIOUS  FEELING  AND  RELIGIOUS  THEORY 

he  who  declares  that  metaphysical  being  is  an  aspiration  or 
purpose,  not  a  matter  of  experience  ;  is  bound  to  account  to  us 
for  the  source  of  these  ideals  and  purposes.  Ideals  do  not  come 
out  of  the  void :  postulates  and  moral  principles  are  not  whis- 
pered to  us  in  the  form  of  "  innate  ideas  "  :  it  is  on  the  spur 
of  experience  that  our  wills  adopt  their  aims  and  their  deep- 
est meanings.  Whatever  is  present  in  ideal,  is  first  present 
in  independent  reality.  In  the  order  of  existence  we  are  first 
passive  and  then  active  :  though  no  analysis  can  separate  our 
passivity  from  our  activity. 


PART  III 

THE  NEED  OF  GOD 
A  SERIES  OF  FREE  MEDITATIONS 


PART  III 
PRELIMINARY 

WE  do  not  know,  in  detail,  what  kind  of  world  we 
would  desire  to  live  in.  Wisdom  to  devise  such 
a  world  we  slowly  acquire,  and  in  infinite  time  may 
possess;  meantime  we  tend  to  assume  that  our  per- 
fectly enlightened  wish  would  correspond  not  too  re- 
motely with  the  general  description  of  the  world  as 
we  find  it  —  at  least  that  it  would  more  nearly  ap- 
proach these  curious  and  mysterious  arrangements  than 
we  now  fathom.  Further,  there  are  certain  major  fea- 
tures of  our  world  whose  value,  or  part  of  whose  value, 
can  be  made  out.  In  adorning  the  figure  of  God  the 
wishes  of  men  have  certainly  had  large  play:  it  is  not 
unimportant  to  enquire  how  much  of  this  wish  and  will 
is  permanently  valid,  how  much  is  the  passing  work  of 
a  fancy  too  little  self-conscious.  We  have  been  told  in 
these  latter  days  that  a  pluralistic  world  would  be  better 
than  a  world  of  One  Being ;  that  a  world  without  an 
Absolute  would  be  wholly  as  good  as  with  one ;  and 
we  have  often  been  assured  that  God  is  no  certain  addi- 
tion to  human  happiness,  most  lately  by  Mr.  McTaggart. 
Emboldened  by  these  representations  we  may  make  a 
few  tentative  excursions  into  this  pleasant  field  of 
world-willing  before  girding  ourselves  to  the  more  stren- 
uous labor  of  truth-finding  —  not  forgetting,  however, 
that  the  question  what  we  need  is  also  a  question  having 
a  true  answer. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  NEED   OF  UNITY:   MONISM  AS   BEARING 
ON  OPTIMISM. 

MONISM  may  be  optimistic  or  pessimistic,  as  we 
conceive  the  One  Being  to  be  good,  bad,  or  indif- 
ferent. Schopenhauer's  One  was  blind,  and  its  products 
fit  only  to  be  swallowed  up  again.  But  monism  at  least 
permits  optimism,  since  a  world  that  is  One  has  a  chance 
of  being  safe.  It  may  even  be  too  safe.  To  the  minds 
of  pluralistic  writers  monism  offers  too  little  scope  for 
freedom  and  adventure;  there  is  not  enough  leeway 
for  risk  and  radical  disaster  ;  not  opportunity  enough  for 
ultimate  enterprise  and  knightly  peril ;  not  enough  sum- 
mons to  courage,  to  world-winning  or  world-losing  wa- 
gers and  commitments.  Because  of  all  the  surplus  pro- 
tection of  monism,  men  are  made  flabby ;  their  skins  are 
safe,  but  their  morals  are  in  danger ;  hence,  the  world 
of  monism  proves  no  such  safe  world  after  all,  when 
you  consider  the  whole  man.  A  true  optimism  must  take 
the  side  of  pluralism.  This  seems  to  me  a  fair  and  fruit- 
promising  issue ;  for  surely  we  will  have  no  world  in 
which  it  is  not  possible  to  be  optimistic,  and  without 
danger  to  our  moral  fiber.  Let  us  then  attack  our  sub- 
ject in  this  way :  considering  different  brands  of  mon- 
ism (for  there  are  different  brands),  and  enquiring  what 
brand  of  optimism  (for  there  are  different  brands  of  this 
also)  is  compatible  with  each  brand  of  monism. 


THE  NEED  OF  UNITY  167 

I 

A  few  elementary  observations  may  be  made  at  the 
outset,  and  got  out  of  the  way. 

First,  no  optimism  is  possible  without  some  kind  of 
monism.  For  in  order  to  think  well  of  your  world,  and 
expect  good  from  it,  your  world  must  at  least  have  a 
character.  It  must  afford  a  basis  for  expectations  or 
probabilities.  If  the  world  were  simply  random,  there 
would  be  no  such  thing  as  probability  in  it,  nothing 
to  build  a  reasonable  hope  or  prospect  on.  There  is  no 
pluralist  who  does  not  limit,  and  very  profoundly  limit, 
the  sort  of  chance  and  accident  which  he  admits  into 
his  world-picture.  Change  occurs,  new  things  are  born, 
forces  of  many  kinds  drive  at  large,  free  individuals 
assert  themselves  freely  :  but  all  this  variety  and  novelty 
takes  place  in  digestible  quantities.  New  creations  are 
to  be  noted;  but  they  begin  small,  in  a  more  or  less 
considerate  manner,  appearing  in  homes  and  other 
places  where  they  can  be  taken  care  of.  The  pluralistic 
universe  does  not  blurt  and  burst  out  in  erratic  and 
unmeasurable  Facts,  of  unheard-of  Kinds.  The  most 
revolutionary  things  that  happen  there  are  revolutions: 
each  quietly  contained  for  a  time,  in  the  form  of  a  new 
idea,  within  the  compass  of  some  man's  head.  The  Mind 
is  in  fact  the  hearth  and  brooding-place  of  such  wild 
Force  and  Novelty  and  Freedom  as  the  pluralist  most 
wishes  to  make  way  for.  And  the  fortunate  circumstance 
that  these  things  have  any  brooding-place  at  all  shows 
how  important  it  is,  even  in  pluralistic  eyes,  that  the 
new  should  come  with  some  reference  to  the  old ;  the 
Many  be  not  too  fatally  disruptive  of  the  One.  The 


168  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

world  that  any  of  us  want  to  live  in  has,  then,  some 
character  of  its  own,  innate  or  acquired,  and  hence 
some  unity  upon  which  any  man  must  build  his 
hopes. 

Second,  no  optimism  is  possible  without  some  kind  of 
doubt  whether  things  are  what  they  seem  ;  without  look- 
ing behind  appearances.  If  the  character  of  the  world  is 
Good,  or  has  good  possibilities,  this  does  not  appear  upon 
the  surface  of  experience.  No  justification  for  either 
optimism  or  monism  can  be  found  there.  The  surface 
of  experience  is  pluralistic  enough,  tossing,  various,  dis- 
tracted, challenging  sanity  if  one  lets  himself  go.  And 
this  surface,  if  it  has  any  general  character,  is  not  more 
good  than  bad.  The  idea  of  evil  did  not  arise  in  the 
mind  without  illustration  in  experience :  it  is  from  this 
surface  that  good  and  bad  get  their  flavor  and  burden 
of  contrast.  No  man  can  be  an  optimist,  then,  without 
going  behind  the  superficial  returns.  The  character 
of  the  world  upon  which  he  bases  his  judgment  must 
be  a  real  character,  as  opposed  to  apparent  character : 
your  optimist  must  be  something  of  a  metaphysician, 
something  of  a  seer.  He  is  an  optimist  only  because  he 
has  caught  or  achieved  some  glimpse  of  the  Whole,  and 
some  Idea  there  with,  which  permits  him  a  confident  judg- 
ment about  the  ultimate  forces  and  grounds  of  sensible 
experience:  the  facts  he  has  about  world-character 
must  be  bottom  facts,  or  they  are  worthless  as  a  basis 
for  expectations. 

Every  optimism,  then,  involves  a  judgment  about  a 
Reality,  which  has  a  character,  and  is  therefore  One.  It 
may  appear  to  the  judger  that  the  unity  of  the  world 
is  only  achievable,  not  an  accomplished  fact :  but  if 


THE  NEED  OF  UNITY  169 

the  world  is  even  achievably  One,  then  it  is  already  One 
in  a  real,  though  more  attenuated  sense;  it  has  a  char- 
acter which  makes  it  capable  of  being  pulled  together. 

II 

Optimism,  we  have  said,  must  come  from  getting  our 
world  into  so  much  of  a  real  unity  that  we  can  pass 
judgment  upon  it  as  a  whole.  We  may  now  observe  that 
this  unity  must  be  of  a  fairly  substantial  sort.  There 
are  types  of  monism  too  attenuated  to  justify  any  gen- 
uine optimism.  Let  us  describe  one  or  two  such. 

Our  world  has,  for  example,  a  certain  formal  unity. 
This  unity  is  to  be  seen  in  the  fact  that  all  objects  of 
experience,  however  various,  are  all  alike  objects  of  ex- 
perience :  must  have  so  much  in  common  as  is  implied 
in  their  being  thinkable  by  the  same  subject,  all  contain- 
able within  his  comprehensive  background  of  objectivity 
and  time.  No  one  can  mention  any  possible  degree  of 
frantic  chaos,  but  that  in  mentioning  it  as  an  idea  of  his, 
he  has  made  a  unity  of  it ;  has  even  presented  it  to  us 
in  a  frame.  Beat  the  bush  of  self-contradiction  with 
sufficient  skill  and  persistency ;  always  some  such  unity 
can  be  corralled  in  the  liveliest  pluralism  statable.  But 
any  pluralism  may  grant  you  these  bonds,  without  sub- 
stantial menace  to  liberty :  all  fish  of  the  sea  are  also 
already  caught  in  the  fisherman's  idea,  and  if  not  fur- 
ther caught  need  not  resent  their  captivity.  But  our 
world  must  be  further  caught,  if  we  are  to  be  optimistic 
pluralists;  this  degree  of  unity  if  it  goes  no  farther  can 
support  no  concrete  expectations.  For  anything,  how- 
ever disastrous,  that  could  be  fancied,  would  by  the  same 
reasoning  fit  into  the  same  frame  of  unity.  Our  opti- 


170  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

mism  must  affect  the  contents  of  our  picture ;  the  unity 
must  obtain  in  the  designs  of  the  object,  as  well  as  in  its 
external  relations  to  the  subject.1 

But  there  are  also  objective  and  concrete  unities 
which  are  still  too  attenuated.  Idealism  knows  of  such 
unities,  discoverable  by  applying  this  same  method 
of  self-contradiction  but  more  thoroughly.  It  may  be 
shown  that  this  world  of  ours  has  a  one-ness  of  Life, 
or  even  of  Purpose.  If  the  real  world  has  a  conscious 
selfhood,  there  is  very  substantial  basis  here  for  expec- 
tations. But  hardly  enough  for  expectations  of  any 
definite  human  color.  For  would  we  not  have  to 
enquire  what  reference  such  world-purpose  might  have 
to  our  own  special  situation;  further,  what  fixes  the 
course  of  such  purpose,  spreading  its  career  out  in  time 
as  if  by  some  resistance;  whether,  then,  in  any  finite 
time  the  purpose  reaches  fulfilment ;  and  whether  any 
segment  of  history,  such  as  may  concern  humanity,  is  to 
move  toward  or  away  from  the  goal  of  our  Good,  in  the 
immeasurable  rhythms  of  cosmic  history?  The  fact  of 
the  simple  existence  of  a  sympathetic  purpose  at  the 
bottom  of  Reality  may  have  some  positive  value,  quite 
apart  from  any  practical  expectations ;  a  question  which 
we  may  later  on  enquire  into.2  But  considered  from 
our  present  standpoint  of  expectation,  any  such  unity 
might  consistently  admit  into  its  outline  a  retrogression, 
damnation,  or  even  extinction  of  human  experience,  if 
there  is  nothing  more  known  of  it.  Has  not  the  good 
God  existed  for  long  ages  in  the  same  world  with  hell 

1  And  such  like  external  relations  between   its  own  parts  as  are 
involved  in  that  common  relation  to  the  subject,  external  to  all  of  them. 

2  Chapter  XV. 


THE  NEED  OF  UNITY  171 

and  all  devils,  hell  getting  steadily  fuller? — and  may  not 
your  One-purpose  do  as  much,  or  even  more  ?  There 
would  seem  to  be  still  plenty  of  risk  in  such  a  world 
for  the  most  reckless  pluralist.  The  Great  Hunter 
crashes  through  the  World-forest  in  pursuit  of  His 
quarry  —  not  spoiling  nor  heeding  our  small  chase,  add- 
ing if  anything  one  more  and  chief  excitement  thereto, 
that  He  do  not  tread  on  us  ! 

In  fact,  must  it  not  be  said  of  any  purely  meta-physical 
monism  that  it  leaves  our  human  situation  and  prob- 
lems much  the  same  as  before  ?  It  is  astonishing,  when 
we  stop  to  consider,  how  much  monism  we  can  define 
without  affording  any  substantial  footing  for  optimism 
—  hence  without  cancelling  any  of  the  undesirable  risks 
of  existence,  to  say  nothing  of  encroaching  on  those  de- 
sirable risks  which  pluralism  wishes  to  preserve.  We 
see  how  it  is  that  pragmatic  objections  to  monism  have 
been  of  two  opposite  tenors :  one,  that  the  world  of 
monism  is  a  "  block-universe  "  closing  up  all  avenues 
of  chance;  the  other,  that  Unity  is  a  wholly  ineffective 
and  meaningless  bond,  making  no  difference  whatever 
in  our  outlook  upon  experience.  It  is  worth  while,  as 
against  the  first  objection,  to  bring  forward  the  second: 
a  single  organism  certainly  does  not  ohne  weiteres  im- 
ply a  petrified  organism.  It  is  open  to  doubt  whether 
the  fact  of  unity,  by  itself,  implies  anything  significant 
about  the  working-character  of  the  thing  unified.  Let 
us  put  the  matter  thus :  if  our  monism  is  such  as  to  pinch 
the  universe  together  only  at  that  point  from  which  it 
emanates —  whether  in  one  cosmical  and  temporal  point 
of  beginning,  or  in  one  permanent  basis  and  ^re-suppo- 
sition—  such  monism  gets  no  control  over  the  wild 


172  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

horses  of  Becoming,  whether  in  our  favor  or  against  us. 
Enough  of  this  kind  of  monism. 

Ill 

If  monism  is  to  be  of  service  to  our  expectations,  it 
must  affect  the  apparent  as  well  as  the  Keal ;  we  must 
indeed  go  beneath  the  surface  of  experience,  where 
good  and  bad  meet  on  equal  terms,  but  only  for  the 
sake  of  prophetic  control  over  that  same  surface  in  its 
further  developments.  Monism  begins  to  offer  signifi- 
cant basis  for  our  prospects  when  it  seizes  upon  the 
actual  processes  of  the  world,  and  declares  that  they  are 
all  cases  of  One  Process.  In  the  nature  of  that  One 
Process  can  be  read  something  of  the  presumable 
outcome. 

All  the  processes  that  we  know  are  operations  carried 
out  against  resistance ;  the  unification  of  the  processes 
may  well  begin  by  a  unification  of  the  resistances,  bring- 
ing all  practical  problems  together  into  one  practical 
world-problem.  Unifications  which  thus  begin  with 
unifying  the  resistances  seem  to  set  up  dualisms  instead 
of  monisms — as  of  light  against  darkness,  Persian  God 
against  Persian  Devil,  spirit  against  matter,  and  the  like. 
But  such  dualisms  are  not  far  from  monism.  For  clearly 
there  can  be  no  well-founded  hope  for  good  unless  there 
is  some  estimate  of  the  resistance  thereto  ;  and  there  can 
be  no  estimate  of  the  resistance  unless  such  resistance 
has  its  own  unity. 

Any  theory  of  the  world  which  represents  all  the 
forces  of  the  world  as  cases  of  one  Force ;  all  laws  as 
cases  of  one  Law ;  is  thus  unifying  our  problem,  and 
helping  man  to  see  his  task  as  the  task  of  spirit  every- 


THE  NEED  OF  UNITY  173 

where  in  a  world  of  Nature.  Such  is  the  monism  of 
natural  science :  and  indeed  might  not  science  be  fairly 
described  as  the  effort  to  reduce  the  practical  problems 
of  man  to  one  problem  ?  Our  apparently  hundred-headed 
problem  is  One,  and  this  one  problem  is  the  only  prob- 
lem there  is  in  the  cosmos.  Whatever  the  '  trend  of 
evolution/  whatever  impulse  there  is  in  the  life  of  the 
world,  all  becomes  merged  in,  and  subordinated  to,  the 
human  undertaking :  the  world-problem  is  our  prob- 
lem. Whence  it  appears  that  human  preferences  and 
aversions  as  they  become  self -knowing  are  absolutely 
valid —  there  being  no  Great  Hunter  with  object  other 
than  our  own. 

Such  monism  as  this  of  effort  and  resistance  is  the 
necessary  beginning  of  any  concretely  significant  mon- 
ism. So  long  as  resistances  are  plural,  we  are  slaves  to 
each  one  severally ;  the  mastery  of  one  gives  no  aid  in 
the  mastery  of  another.  There  can  be  valid  hope  only  in 
a  world  in  which  the  conquest  of  one  difficulty  is  already 
a  partial  conquest  of  another.  Monism  of  this  sort  does 
actually  wipe  out  certain  conceivable  chances  for  hero- 
ism, if  heroism  consists  in  infinite  willingness  to  begin 
again  at  Zero.  But  it  does  not  eliminate  the  freedom  and 
variety  of  life  —  it  alone  makes  such  freedom  and  variety 
possible.  For  the  Many,  in  such  case,  are  more  tyran- 
nous than  the  One  ;  in  winning  subjection  to  one  master 
we  gain  foot-looseness  from  indefinite  tyranny  of  the 
mob.  In  cosmic  as  in  political  affairs,  man  has  many 
powers  over  him  ;  and  unless  he  find  some  one  power 
in  which  the  powers  of  capital,  of  custom,  of  church,  of 
the  mandarinate,  of  social  pretence  have  their  match 
and  solvent  he  is  slave  indeed,  though  he  live  under  a 


174  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

"  free  "  constitution.  Freedom  from  the  powers  is  found 
in  subjection  to  Power;  as  freedom  from  the  ten  com- 
mandments is  found  in  subjection  to  the  one  and  great 
commandment.  Hence  monism  is  at  once  fixity  and  free- 
dom from  fixity ;  the  only  possible  condition  under  which 
freedom  in  the  world  of  concrete  enterprise  can  be  won. 

It  is  necessary,  then,  to  any  optimism,  that  there 
should  be  unity  in  the  conscious  processes  of  the  world ; 
and  especially  a  unity  of  the  resistances  or  evils,  which 
such  processes  have  to  meet.  But  this  is  not  a  sufficient 
foundation  for  optimism.  Optimism  requires  a  further 
judgment,  namely,  that  the  Real  is  the  good,  and  not 
the  evil:  i.e.,  that  evil  is  an  essentially  conquerable 
thing,  not  a  reality  co-ordinate  with  the  purpose  that  is 
against  it.  And  herewith,  as  monism  begins  to  be  sig- 
nificant, it  begins  also  to  justify  the  pluralistic  criticism: 
by  reading  the  outcome  into  the  prior  constitution  or 
nature  of  the  case,  the  world  is  made  too  safe,  —  and 
the  nerve  of  our  responsibility,  as  well  as  the  zest  of 
our  personal  importance  is  relaxed. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  judgment,  that  the  Real  is  the 
good  and  not  the  evil,  stands  at  a  critical  pass  in  this 
problem  of  monism.  It  is  a  judgment  of  many  shades, 
and  some  conclusion  as  to  its  worth  may  be  gained  by 
considering  how  it  is  actually  used  in  human  affairs. 

IV 

The  implicit  assumption  of  the  scientific  view  of  things 
is  that  every  evil  is  to  be  remedied  in  time  by  our  own 
efforts.  Conversely,  there  is  a  type  of  reaction  to  every 
definable  ill  of  our  human  condition  which  we  might 
well  describe  as  the  scientific  reaction  ;  that  is,  the  effort 


THE  NEED  OF  UNITY  176 

to  refer  the  ill  in  question  to  causes,  to  conceive  it  as 
a  form  assumed  under  definite  conditions  by  the  one 
world-energy,  and  by  mastering  the  conditions  to  mas* 
ter  the  ill.  The  evil,  in  short,  must  be  thoroughly 
examined  and  known ;  to  overcome  it,  we  must  first 
become  fully  conscious  of  it. 

But  our  world  seems  to  be  so  constituted  that  many 
a  bad  condition  is  not  best  cured  that  way.  It  happens 
at  times  that  an  invalid  may  make  a  better  bid  for  health 
by  ignoring  his  disease  than  by  enquiring  into  it.  As 
for  our  moral  faults,  it  is  quite  impossible  to  reach  a 
cure  by  the  scientific  reaction  alone.  If  we  tend  to 
ignore  our  own  sins  and  win  our  moral  salvation  in  large 
part  through  determined  self-respect —  there  is  in  this 
instinctive  attitude  much  moral  lethargy,  no  doubt,  but 
some  modicum  of  natural  health  of  spirit.  Willingness 
to  confront  every  evil,  in  ourselves  and  outside  ourselves, 
with  the  blunt,  factual  conscience  of  science;  willing- 
ness to  pay  the  full  causal  price  for  the  removal  of  the 
blemish ;  this  kind  of  integrity  can  never  be  dispensed 
with  in  any  optimistic  program.  And  yet  we  cannot 
radically  cure  evil  that  way  :  the  method  of  justice  works 
perfectly  only  in  the  world  of  scientific  objects  them- 
selves, world  of  unconscious  things.  Wherever  conscious- 
ness enters  we  have  to  combine  the  scientific  reaction 
with  another,  one  which  involves  turning  away  from  the 
defect  and  asserting  in  effect  that  the  evil  is  less-than- 
real,  that  the  real  is  the  good.  There  is  a  self-righting 
tendency  in  conscious  beings  which  has  only  analogies 
more  or  less  distant  in  nature.  The  system  of  movements 
in  such  a  group  as  the  solar  system  has  a  certain  self- 
righting  tendency ;  a  gyroscope  will  resume  its  own  plane 


176  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

after  disturbance  not  too  great;  any  living  organism  has 
still  more  remarkable  self- restoring  properties:  but  when 
we  are  dealing  with  consciousness  on  its  own  ground, 
or  with  any  product  of  consciousness,  with  systems  per- 
sonal or  social  or  political,  self-righting  becomes  the 
essential  thing  in  all  righting.  This  is  the  grain  of  truth 
in  the  former  laissezfaire  theories.  This  is  the  impor- 
tant truth  in  the  instinctive  dislike  of  attacking  the 
social  evil  and  its  affiliations  with  the  hammer  and  tongs 
of  scientific  procedure  and  publicity.  In  these  regions, 
our  world  upholds  a  policy  of  working  out  the  good  by 
over-attention  to  it  and  under-attention  to  its  opposite. 
The  world  behaves  as  if  the  good  were  the  real. 

I  venture  to  say  that  there  can  be  no  real  optimism 
on  the  scientific  basis  with  its  type  of  monism.  For  not 
alone  are  evils  too  numerous  to  be  disposed  of  in  this  way. 
It  is  also  true  that  progress,  with  its  income  of  new 
pains  and  troubles,  would  involve  continually  greater 
and  not  lesser  suffering.  If  it  were  the  destiny  of 
human  life  to  pursue  all  evil  by  proportionate  attention, 
becoming  first  fully  conscious  of  it  and  of  its  conditions, 
a  just  consideration  of  the  way  in  which  life  deepens 
both  in  sensitivity  and  in  demand  must  open  the  pros- 
pect of  our  knowing  pain  and  evil  not  less  intensely, 
but  more  intensely  forever.  Men  differ  much  in  their 
disposition  to  yield  the  scientific  method  to  the  more 
monistic  method  of  ignoring  evil.  Some  are  unable  to 
enjoy  a  good  until  they  think  they  have  earned  it,  which 
earning  is  another  name  for  knowing  the  conditions  and 
complying  with  them,  conditions  fixed  in  the  unity  of 
nature.  Others  demand  without  earning,  and  receive 
much  of  what  they  demand.  But  even  the  most  earn- 


THE  NEED  OF  UNITY  177 

ing  natures  earn  less  than  they  think.  For  on  the  level 
of  experience-surface  there  is  an  overcrowding  of  possi- 
bilities, too  many  features  of  the  world  to  be  attended 
to;  every  man  must  choose  which  aspects  of  his  world 
he  will  look  upon,  forgetting  the  overwhelming  major- 
ity; and  every  man  is  led  (even  though  he  like  to  be 
a  pessimist)  to  select  those  aspects  which  best  suit  his 
habit  of  thought  and  make  a  world-harmony  for  him. 
Every  one  must  fall  back  at  last  on  vis  medicatrix 
naturcB  when  working  out  his  destiny,  making  mute 
appeal  to  the  proposition  that  the  real  is  the  good,  and 
the  good  the  realgar  excellence. 


Optimism,  I  say,  requires  this  degree  of  monism; — 
belief  in  an  individual  Reality  not-ourselves  which  makes 
for  Tightness,  and  which  actually  accomplishes  right- 
ness  when  left  to  its  own  working.  Does  this,  then, 
eliminate  moral  courage  from  the  universe?  making 
things,  on  the  whole,  too  secure?  It  must  be  answered 
that  there  are  right  and  wrong  ways  of  taking  this  prin- 
ciple, which  in  itself  permits  moral  laxity  and  also 
admits  moral  enterprise,  as  in  a  world  of  free  men  we 
should  desire  —  for  what  moral  worth  can  there  be  in  a 
strenuosity  which  is  a  necessary  condition  of  existence 
itself,  as  in  a  pluralistic  universe  it  must  be  ? 

If  ignoring  evil  becomes  a  conscious  principle  for 
saving  personal  effort,  it  is  bad  —  and  also  defeats  itself. 
Evil  self -savingly  ignored  is  not  cured  :  the  monism  in 
question  is  not  mechanical  in  its  operation.  When  seek- 
ing forgiveness  and  getting  it  becomes  routine,  it  ceases 
to  minister  to  moral  progress.  The  ship  of  state  has 


178  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

large  inherent  tendencies  to  go  right,  even  if  the  helms- 
man is  tipsy  and  negligent — else  what  state  could  last: 
but  when  the  helmsman  begins  to  exploit  this  qual- 
ity, adopting  laissez  faire  policies  for  his  own  holiday, 
the  way  to  shipwreck  is  not  long.  Selective  emphasis 
becomes  insolence  when  the  goodness  of  Reality  is  made 
a  personal  perquisite. 

The  true  use  of  the  principle  seems  to  lie  in  this 
direction :  that  the  evil  is  not  merely  forgotten,  but  gen- 
uinely disposed  of  by  that  to  which  the  attention  is 
turned.  If  I  assume  of  my  neighbor  that  the  reality  of 
him  is  good,  and  that  his  faults  are  relatively  non-real, 
this  assumption  is  justified  only  as  I  actually  grasp  his 
faults  as  the  seamy  sides  of  his  virtues,  having  their 
reality  and  their  ultimate  relief  in  the  heightened  life 
of  those  same  positive  qualities,  —  his  wrath  as  part  of  his 
spirit,  his  hesitation  as  a  phase  of  his  self -consciousness — 
to  be  relieved  by  more  self-consciousness,  his  shiftlessness 
an  incident  of  his  ideality  —  to  be  remedied  by  a  more 
vigorous  ideality,  not  by  mere  battle  against  shiftless- 
ness.  Of  ourselves,  we  know  that  when  life  is  at  low  tide 
our  very  strength  stands  against  us  and  becomes  our 
fault  and  our  viciousness ;  whereas,  when  life  is  full,  our 
sin  becomes  our  character,  and  fights  for  the  good  we 
seek.  Ignoring,  then,  is  justified  when  the  ill  is  known; 
known  as  an  alterable  aspect  of  a  reality  which  is  good. 
The  whole  necessary  policy  of  efficient  living,  that  of 
concentrating  upon  a  few  positive  aims,  to  the  neglect 
of  much  detail,  is  morally  and  practically  justified  (where 
it  is  justified)  only  by  a  conscious  monism  of  the  sort 
we  have  been  describing.  In  fine,  any  and  every  radical 
commitment  to  a  single  aim,  heroic  adoption  of  a  cause 


THE  NEED   OF  UNITY  179 

as  one's  own  fate,  ultimate  risk  and  wager  against  des- 
tiny, can  be  justified  whether  before  morals  or  even  good 
sense,  only  if  the  meaning  of  the  commitment  in  ques- 
tion is  this :  that  this  thing  to  which  I  give  myself  is  a 
character  of  the  One  which  is  real  and  good,  destined 
to  endure,  held  in  place  when  established  by  all  the  self- 
righting  forces  of  the  universe.  The  moral  good  which 
pluralism  demands  can  only  be  had,  I  say,  on  the  basis 
of  the  kind  of  monism  here  defined. 

Justice  and  science  pit  wrong  against  wrong  to  make 
right;  thereby  making  good  commensurate  and  homo- 
geneous with  evil.  Justice  and  science  must  smell  full 
deep  of  every  ill-odor  in  order  to  discard  it.  If  we  doubt 
the  universal  worth  of  this  method,  it  is  because  we 
judge  evil  to  be  a  shade  less  real  than  the  good,  some- 
thing that  can  be  displaced  to  some  extent  by  simply 
finding  its  place  in  a  positive  view  of  things  —  reduc- 
ing its  evil-ness  to  an  error  of  position.  This  gives  us 
our  responsible  right  to  discontinuity.  Such  a  view,  we 
may  note,  also  involves  a  judgment  that  Reality  is  akin 
to  consciousness;  for  in  terms  of  the  causal  network, 
there  is  no  other  than  the  scientific  method  possible. 

VI 

It  remains  to  be  noticed  that  the  monism  here 
described  leaves  a  degree  of  pluralism  in  the  universe. 
Any  principle  of  selection,  which  admits  certain  ele- 
ments of  experience  into  the  Real  and  excludes  others,  is 
incompletely  monistic.  The  mind  is  a  unity  in  process 
of  being  made  up ;  in  which  process  much  that  presents 
itself  is  bundled  out,  discarded,  as  not  to  be  knitted  in 
with  the  unity  here  being  constituted  :  and  whatever  is 


180  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

true  of  the  single  mind,  if  the  mind  is  an  integral  part 
of  the  universe,  is  true  also  of  the  universe.  If  any 
materials  of  consciousness  appear  to  the  mind  as  loosely 
attached,  detachable,  actually  detached  and  excluded  — 
then  in  Keality  they  are  thus  detached  and  excluded. 
Any  experience  dropped  by  us  is  dropped  absolutely. 
Even  though  the  One  may  attend  to  what  we  let  go, 
our  letting  go  is  one  of  the  absolute  facts ;  a  stitch 
dropped  by  ourselves  is  dropped  by  the  World,  irrevo- 
cably dropped.  The  scientific  method  of  disposing  of 
evil  is  more  completely  preservative  of  the  outcast  ele- 
ments, hence  in  this  respect  more  monistic :  science 
regards  well  what  it  will  exclude,  whereby  the  thing  to 
be  excluded  gains  a  kind  of  immortality  in  memory,  at 
least  in  the  records  and  working  of  the  mind  —  sci- 
entific exclusion  is  thus  no  wholesale  exclusion.  But 
otherwise  the  mind  deals  more  ruthlessly  with  its  con- 
tents. Forgetting  drops  much  experience-stuff  out  of 
sight  that  has  not  been  refused  in  the  movements  of 
attention.  Discontinuities  abound  in  our  inner  history, 
snapping  off  of  thought-threads,  wanderings,  unfinished 
business —  never  to  be  finished;  moral  discontinuities 
also,  in  forgiveness  and  self-forgivenesses.  Sleepings 
and  wakings,  the  fresh  starts  without  which  every 
finite  will  would  speedily  be  brought  to  despair,  — 
through  all  such  our  mental  and  moral  world,  so  far 
as  its  contents  are  concerned,  takes  on  the  aspect  of 
a  series  of  geologic  faults  —  departs  from  a  scrupu- 
lous monism  in  which  every  item  is  an  equally  valid 
member  of  the  Whole,  by  quite  unmeasurable  amount. 
There  is  no  monism  on  the  level  o'f  events.  History 
falls  by  quantities  into  the  abyss,  and  this  is  the 


THE   NEED  OF  UNITY  181 

unstinted  opportunity  for  our  sifting  —  even  yet  all 
too  uu-radical. 

The  only  hope  of  finding  the  Real  to  be  one  and 
good  is  in  such  sifting-right,  in  the  circumstance  that 
the  universe  is  not  utterly  organic,  and  that  we  are  not 
compelled  to  absorb  into  our  structure  all  the  false 
scaffolding  we  have  raised.  Unless  our  monism  were  thus 
saturated  with  pluralism  and  absolute  death,  we  should 
have  no  power  to  move  under  the  burden  of  our  past. 
As  old  men,  dying,  free  the  race  from  their  formulae, 
so  our  deeds  and  memories  die,  and  leave  us  new  from 
point  to  point ;  links  drop  out  of  sight  in  evolution  and 
in  history;  whole  vistas  of  character  evaporate  into  the 
night,  unpreserved,  unpreservable  by  diary  and  mem- 
oir. Whatever  the  ultimate  goal  of  Reality  there  is 
leisure  for  working  it  out;  the  creator  has  been  gen- 
erous with  time,  with  the  material  of  existence,  the 
cloth  of  history,  and  most  of  it  is  wasted.  It  looks  at 
times  as  if  he  had  been  equally  prodigal  of  men.  Only 
the  Nature  of  things  is  One  and  Good;  all  the  "empiri- 
cal stuff"  is  as  yet  unmeasured  and  unjudged. 

There  is,  if  this  view  be  valid,  no  fixed  quantity  of 
evil  fortune  mapped  out  in  advance  for  every  one ;  no 
fated  "peck  of  dirt"  for  each  one  to  eat:  there  is  room 
for  just  such  hastening  or  retarding  the  One  process  as 
there  seems,  in  our  consciousness  of  freedom,  to  be.  The 
One  stands  there,  as  our  opportunity,  not  as  mechanical 
necessity.  The  monism  of  the  world  is  such  only  as  to 
give  meaning  to  its  pluralism;  our  belonging  to  God 
such  only  as  gives  us  greater  hold  upon  ourselves.  True, 
the  heights  of  monism  and  of  necessity  we  have  not 
scaled ;  nor  shall  we  here  attempt  them.  Suffice  it  to 


182  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

have  shown  that  for  the  good  of  men,  for  their  good- 
hope  as  also  for  their  rightful  darings  and  commit- 
ments, some  concrete  conscious  monism  is  a  necessary 
condition. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  NEED   OF  AN   ABSOLUTE:   REFLECTIONS 
ON  ITS   PRACTICAL  WORTH 

HAS  the  Absolute,  or  the  thought  of  an  Absolute, 
any  human  value  of  practical  sort  ?  What  interest 
has  that  which  is  changeless  to  a  world  of  movement  and 
change?  what  function  in  a  world  which  deals  every- 
where with  contingent  realities  could  be  performed  by 
a  reality  (if  there  were  such)  which  is  subject  to  no  con- 
tingencies, final,  resting  in  itself  —  having  no  outside, 
nor  beyond,  and  so  nothing  to  fear  or  to  expect  from 
any  external  possibilities? 

We  know  of  no  absolute  stability  in  our  physical  uni- 
verse, and  yet  we  get  on  very  well  with  our  relative 
stabilities ;  build  on  the  spinning  surface  of  the  earth, 
walk  on  ship's  decks,  having  mastered  the  art  of  treat- 
ing any  relative  foothold  as  if  it  were,  for  the  time  being, 
absolute,  and  yet  without  being  deceived.  Even  the  fall- 
ing aviator  feels  that  the  earth  is  moving  upward  to 
him.  It  is  not  otherwise  with  our  truths  in  every  depart- 
ment of  practice ;  we  learn  to  use  them  within  their 
range  of  validity,  treating  them  as  if  they  were  abso- 
lute, but  not  misled  by  the  practical  worth  of  that  assump- 
tion, always  ready  (or  almost  always)  to  subordinate  them 
to  another  truth  when  their  limit  is  reached.  We  can 
treat  our  atomic  weights  as  permanent,  without  needing 
to  deny  conditions  under  which  the  dogma  fails  to  hold 


184  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

good.  May  it  not  be  the  same  with  Reality  also,  — 
that  a  floating  reality,  a  slowly  changing  and  growing 
world,  a  developing  God,  even  —  with  finite  and  revis- 
able  thoughts  and  purposes, — may  it  not  be  that  such 
a  universe  would  serve  as  well  as  one  that  is  based  on 
an  Ultimatum,  an  Eternal  and  Necessary  Fact  ?  Nay 
rather,  may  not  such  conditional  reality  be  the  only  sort 
we  ever  do  or  can  make  reference  to  ? 

No  better  summary  of  the  failure  of  the  alleged 
Absolute  to  make  connections  with  human  needs  can  be 
given  than  these  words  of  William  James  :  "  The  abso- 
lute is  useless  for  deductive  purposes.  It  gives  us  ab- 
solute safety  if  you  will,  but  it  is  compatible  with  every 
relative  danger.  Whatever  the  details  of  experience 
may  prove  to  be,  after  the  fact  of  them  the  absolute 
will  adopt  them.  It  is  an  hypothesis  which  functions 
retrospectively  only,  not  prospectively."  * 

Like  those  too  formal  unities  which  we  were  recently 
considering,  the  Absolute  seems  to  be  tolerant  of  any 
kind  of  world-contents  and  experience-contents  what- 
ever :  and  therefore  the  idea  of  the  Absolute  seems  to 
throw  no  light  on  the  kind  of  destiny  one  may  expect, 
suggests  not  one  course  of  action  rather  than  another, 
in  short  "  is  useless  for  deductive  purposes."  "  I  have 
|  noticed,"  once  said  an  artist  to  me,  "  that  perfection  is 
nearly  always  barren  :  a  touch  of  ugliness  is  needed  to 
give  life,  action,  instability."  When  one  speaks  of  the 

1  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  page  111.  This  is  not  William  James*  only 
word  on  the  worth  of  an  Absolute.  I  quote  these  words  as  the  best  state- 
ment I  can  find  of  a  typical  opinion,  not  as  a  complete  statement  of  his 
opinion.  In  Pragmatism  and  later  books,  James  became,  consistently  or 
not,  more  or  less  tolerant  of  the  Absolute,  finding  it  useful  as  providing 
*  moral  holidays,'  etc. 


THE  NEED  OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  185 

Absolute,  we  are  reminded  of  some  such  well-closed  per- 
fection, all  too  successfully  placed  beyond  the  exigen- 
cies of  all  living  and  striving;  we  doubt  whether  it 
corresponds  with  any  significant  reality ;  whether  it  is 
not  a  name  for  some  sort  of  logical  problem,  a  name 
handed  back  to  us  as  an  answer. 

I  cannot  imagine  any  issue  more  vital  to  us  than  this. 
Under  various  names  we  have  been  dealing  with  Abso- 
lute Reality.  Under  the  name  of  Substance,  it  appeared 
as  the  anchorage  which  all  idea-meanings  seek;  it  was 
credited  with  internal  relations  to  value  of  utmost  import- 
ance. Whether  it  had  any  bearing  upon  action  (such 
as  "  deductive  purposes "  imply)  we  did  not  expressly 
enquire,  though  the  name  "non-impulsive  background  " 
so  far  corroborates  the  comments  of  William  James.  I 
am  inclined  to  agree  with  the  requirement  that  our  First 
Principle  must  be  useful  for  practice  a/so,  that  it  must 
mean  something  in  particular  to  the  exclusion  of  some- 
thing-else-in-particular,  that  it  must  be  a  principle  from 
which  deductions  can  be  made.  I  wish  therefore  to 
enquire  whether  the  Absolute  is  an  object  or  concept 
that  we  could  do  without.  Let  me  put  down  certain 
scattered  reflections  on  this  subject. 


Something  like  the  Absolute  appears  from  time  to 
time  in  the  history  of  religion ;  but  it  is  noteworthy 
that  it  is  not  worshipped.  There  is  no  temple  to 
Brahman.  The  Algonquins  did  not  pray  to  Manitou. 
Unkulunkulu,  as  most  primitive  near-Absolutes,  is  too 
far  off  and  has  no  interest  in  the  affairs  of  men ; 
whence  petitions  must  be  addressed  to  the  nearer  and 


186  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

more  finite  spirits.  The  same  judgment  occurs  a  hun- 
dred times  in  the  various  religions  of  the  world.  In 
all  religions  have  mediators  of  some  kind  corrected 
the  tendency  of  the  great  God-father  to  fall  in  with  the 
Absolute,  giving  the  Deity  effective  human  sympathies 
and  fighting  interests.  Ahura  Mazda  must  have  his 
group  of  nature-gods  and  his  retinue  of  Amesha  Spentas. 
Even  Jahweh  as  he  tends  to  be  thought  of  as  Abso- 
lute ceases  to  deal  with  men  in  person  and  works  only 
through  messengers  or  through  the  Logos.  What  we 
need  to  worship  is  the  seminal,  disturbing,  creating, 
and  destroying  principle  of  Reality :  for  which  purpose 
would  not  Siva  be  a  better  Deity  than  Brahm,  the 
ineffable  and  indifferent  ? 

Must  not  Reality  be  a  Real  Force,  a  Real  Mover,  and 
no  Eternal  Fact  of  changeless  order?  Whether  for 
worship,  or  for  theory,  or  for  common  practice,  we 
need  to  reach  an  Ultimate  which  is  no  ultimate  indif- 
ference :  something,  rather,  like  an  ultimate  grit,  a 
principle  that  lends  friction  between  wheel  and  belt, 
which  gives  bite  to  the  tool,  plunge  to  the  earth-dive 
of  the  plow. 


Still,  we  cannot  dispense  with  a  Changeless  Ultimate 
in  our  world.  For  practical  life  is  not  interested  solely 
in  making  differences.  Indeed,  action  is  never  interested 
in  simply  producing  something  different :  it  is  always 
interested  in  making  improvement,  which  is  to  say, 
change  in  a  situation  which  itself  is  permanent.  The 
permanence  of  the  frame  of  change  has  a  value  of  its' 
own,  if  only  this  —  that  we  find  ourselves  at  home  in  it. 


THE  NEED  OF  AN   ABSOLUTE  187 

In  the  altered  place  we  recognize  ourselves  because  we 
recognize  our  environment :  these  two  things,  self-iden- 
tity and  world-identity,  go  inseparably  together.  And 
the  degree  of  alteration  which  we  can  endure,  even  for 
the  better  or  best,  is  not  indefinitely  great.  Any  perma- 
nent feature  of  the  world  will  always  have  at  least  this 
value  for  action  :  it  is  a  part  of  that  which  we  are  for- 
ever moving  toward  —  there  will  be  something  at  the 
ast  day  which  was  also  there  at  the  first. 

It  may  be  well  for  us  that  the  only  changeless  Being 
in  the  universe  is  the  Absolute,  if  there  be  an  Absolute. 
For  no  more  definite  shape  could  be  so  attractive  but 
that  in  time  we  should  lose  zest  in  moving  toward  it. 
The  Absolute  binds  us  to  no  particular  conservatism; 
impedes  no  possible  rate  of  progress  in  terms  of  con- 
crete experience.  Here  the  unlimited  hospitality  and 
indifference  of  the  Absolute  to  contents  of  experience  is 
an  advantage  :  "  compatible  with  every  relative  danger  " 
—  compatible,  then,  with  every  relative  improvement. 
Offering  all  the  advantages  of  changelessness,  with  none 
of  the  disadvantages  of  conserving  the  undesirable. 

It  is  the  presence  of  a  Changeless  Absolute  that  alone 
could  set  us  wholly  free  to  grow.  For  otherwise  we  would 
fix  upon  some  concrete  thing  as  a  Changeless,  something 
which  ought  to  be  forever  revisable,  and  then  we  must 
either  stagnate,  or  break. 

Not  only  my  own  identity,  but  the  identity  of  the 
human  mind  as  a  species,  is  bound  up  with  that  changeless 
identity  of  the  ultimate  object.  We  pass  judgment  upon 
the  intellects,  and  estimate  the  world-guesses,  of  Newton, 
and  Paracelsus,  and  Thales,  and  Lao  Tze,  and  Moses: 
we  are  able  to  do  this  only  in  so  far  as  they,  and  we  all, 


188  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

have  been  aiming  at  the  same  mark,  thinking  the  same 
world  (not  even,  at  bottom,  a  slowly  changing  world), 
testing  character  upon  the  same  nature.  If  a  man's 
philosophy  is  to  be  a  faithful  expression  of  his  "  tem- 
perament," he  must  in  that  philosophy  single-mindedly 
seek  —  the  Absolute  :  for  individual  differences  can  be 
individually  significant,  or  even  measurable,  only  as 
they  accept  the  same  aim  and  standard. 

Identity  of  mind  in  the  species  is  a  consideration  of 
the  same  moment  with  sanity  in  general.  We  cannot 
dispense  with  a  Changeless  Ultimate. 


As  a  First  Principle,  the  Changeless  is  of  course 
insufficient.  Our  Ultimate  Reality  must  have  qualities 
of  both  changelessness  and  change.  Or,  may  it  be  that 
the  principle  of  change  is  furnished  by  ourselves  ?  Let 
us  consider  this. 

No  Eternal  Fact  can  of  itself  foster  any  practical 
conclusions  or  deductions ;  what  one  will  do  about  it 
depends  on  how  one  is  disposed  to  take  it.  There  is  no 
conclusion  from  one  premise  alone ;  and  in  these  prac- 
tical affairs  conclusions  are  drawn  by  concentrating  the 
changeless  Facts  in  one  major  premise,  while  we  carry 
with  us  the  minor  premises  which  determine  how  we 
shall  respond  to  them.  Let  me  illustrate  : 

Among  the  relatively  stable  features  of  our  existence, 
there  is  this  one,  that  "  Life  is  short."  Well,  —  what  is 
to  be  done  about  it  ?  That  depends  upon  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  individual;  but  in  every  case  something  is  done 
about  it.  One  man  pulls  a  long  face  ;  becomes  a  pious 
miser,  begrudging  every  minute  not  spent  in  profitable 


THE  NEED  OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  189 

meditation  —  and  when  he  says  to  a  neighbor  that  life 
is  short,  he  expects  to  see  the  same  practical  consequences. 
But  hear  old  Omar  announce  to  us  this  same  eternal 
truth,  and  notice  his  conclusion :  parsimonious  also, 
toward  the  finite  number  of  moments,  but  for  fear  he  may 
not  live  to  drink  his  fill.  His  originality  lies  in  his  minor 
premise.  But  indeed  the  shortness  of  life  need  mean 
neither  one  conclusion  nor  the  other;  need  mean  no  time- 
parsimony  of  any  kind.  Why,  for  example,  might  it  not 
suggest  leisureliness  —  since  all  fever-haste  makes  time 
run  the  faster :  only  the  typical  Oriental  knows  how  to 
prize  time  —  namely  by  taking  time  about  everything. 
If  we  rebel  against  the  announcement  of  eternal  facts, 
it  may  be  in  part  because  those  who  have  brandished 
them  have  not  allowed  enough  for  these  differences  of 
imagination,  for  the  need  of  a  minor  premise  :  our  proper 
retort  being  that  the  eternal  fact,  by  itself,  has  no  con- 
sequences at  all.  Not,  indeed,  unless  there  are  some 
necessary  minor  premises. 

The  Absolute,  whatever  else  it  may  be,  is  the  quint- 
essence of  Eternal  Fact.  May  it  be  that  the  minor  prem- 
ise which  makes  that  object  significant  for  action  is  — 
the  Self?  We  must  develop  this  consideration  further. 


Every  circumstance,  however  trivial,  which  becomes 
a  spur  to  action,  has  something  of  the  Absolute  in  it. 
Is  my  corn  ripe  ?  —  then  I  move,  because  my  Real 
World  is  unchangeably  a  world  which  presents  to  me 
on  this  date  ripe  corn,  an  absolute  and  relentless  fact  of 
history,  never  to  be  undone  while  reality  is  itself.  But 
beside  the  Absolute,  my  Self  is  necessary  to  account 


190  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

for  my  motion  —  all  namely,  that  imagination  presents 
to  me  on  the  advent  of  ripe  corn.  The  minor  premise 
lies  in  my  Self.  The  world  has  its  nature ;  the  Self 
has  its  character:  when  nature  and  character  come 
together,  action  results. 

But  nature  and  character  are  not  two  separable  facts. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  character  in  men  apart  from 
nature  in  objects.  For  character  forms  itself  on  the 
reliabilities  of  the  world ;  is  nothing  else  than  my  way 
of  response  to  the  world's  way  of  approach.  My  char- 
acter is  only  seen  and  known  in  my  actual  dealings  with 
the  habitual  straits  evolved  by  the  nature  of  my  world. 
Since  every  deed  is  an  exhibition  both  of  nature  and  of 
character,  all  behavior  is  symbolic,  if  we  know  how  to 
read  the  symbol.  As  one  handles  his  bat,  or  his  fork, 
so  will  he  treat  his  friends,  his  pecuniary  obligations, 
his  holidays.  Among  other  things,  character  is  well 
shown,  perhaps  chiefly  shown,  in  one's  grasp  of  nature 
itself:  given  a  congeries  of  facts,  how  much  nature 
(that  is,  absolute  objective  character)  can  you  extract 
from  it — is  not  this  a  test  of  the  man?  Hence  it  may 
be  said  that  there  is  for  us  no  such  thing  as  nature  in 
things  apart  from  character  in  men ;  and  my  descriptions 
of  nature  betray  its  reference  to  my  approaches.  Things 
are  described  as  hard,  heavy,  stubborn,  yielding,  impos- 
ing, difficult,  and  the  like :  which  of  these  qualities  of 
things  (not  to  mention  the  primary  and  secondary  qual- 
ities of  the  classics)  would  have  existed  apart  from  the 
conscious  character  that  has  to  do  with  them?  Nature 
and  character  are  fitted  to  each  other,  evoked  by  each 
other,  relative  to  each  other  throughout;  and  this  by 
virtue  of  the  steadfast  identity  and  absolute  relation 


THE  NEED  OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  191 

between  them.  Given  the  Self  and  the  Changeless,  is  it 
somehow  conceivable  that  all  the  rest  should  spin  itself 
out  between?  Is  it  not  at  least  possible  that  in  this 
situation,  character  confronting  nature,  some  principle 
of  differentiation  may  be  found  which  will  take  away 
the  reproach  of  the  Absolute  ? 

We  shall  come  to  this  point  again. 


The  Absolute  ought  not  to  be  barren,  for  it  is  sup- 
posed to  be  reached  in  answer  to  significant  questions ; 
as  a  last  reply  to  enquiry.  To  say  that  it  is  useless  for 
deductive  purposes  is  to  say  that  it  does  not  answer  the 
questions  put.  It  will  be  enlightening  to  compare  a 
number  of  lines  of  enquiry  which  end  in  an  Absolute,  to 
observe,  if  we  can,  why  the  questions  are  not  answered ; 
or  why  they  are  thought  not  to  be  answered. 


Consider,  first,  the  epistemologist's  enquiry :  What 
can  I  surely  know? 

The  meaning  of  the  question  is  practical :  nothing  is 
more  costly  than  error,  and  who  can  understand  his 
errors? —  only  he  who  knows  what  he  may  be  sure  of. 
But  error  seems  to  be  incident  to  all  judgments  made 
about  external  things,  things  physical,  things  social, 
even  things  scientific  and  rational.  The  world  waits  for 
a  Descartes,  who  pursues  these  uncertainties  to  the  end 
and  exhausts  them :  who  finds  his  absolute  assurance 
at  last.  In  doubting  all  things,  I  cannot  doubt  that 
I  doubt;  and  doubting,  (that  is,  thinking),  I  exist. 
Surely  here  is  an  Absolute.  But  is  it  useful  for  deduc- 


192  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

tive  purposes  ?  Descartes  does  not  find  it  sufficient :  it 
is  a  great  truth,  but  he  uses  it  —  not  at  all. 

What  is  the  trouble  with  Descartes'  Absolute  ?  Is  it 
not  this :  that  this  existence-of-self  is  certain,  whether  my 
knowledge  of  external  objects  succeeds  or  fails  ?  But  the 
task  set  before  me,  the  task  that  stimulates  my  original 
question,  is  that  of  knowing  objects.  It  does  not 
answer  my  question  to  know  that  I  can  be  sure  of  the 
Subject.  Hence  it  is  that  Descartes  has  to  appeal  to 
the  knowledge  of  God,  through  the  "  ontological  proof  " 
—  a  way  of  leaping  from  the  subject  to  the  object,  from 
the  idea  to  the  objective  fact. 

What  we  want  is  absolute  objective  certainty ;  and 
this,  Descartes'  I-am  fails  to  give  us. 


Descartes'  mode  of  argument  reappears  in  manifold 
interesting  forms  in  modern  thought.  As  in  reply  to 
the  skeptic  or  agnostic,  who  asserts  in  despair  that 
there  is  no  absolute  truth.  The  dialectician  retorts: 
Then  at  least  your  own  assertion  must  be  absolutely  true. 
There  must  be  some  absolute  truth,  for  you  cannot 
assert  that  there  is  none  without  self-contradiction.  As 
in  Descartes'  case,  the  doubter  is  reminded  of  himself. 
There,  in  his  own  assertion,  is  a  certainty  from  which 
he  cannot  escape. 

This  turn  of  thought  which  reminds  the  enquirer  of 
himself \  we  shall  call  the  reflexive  turn.  It  reappears 
in  all  discoveries  of  the  Absolute.  It  is  clinching — but 
is  likely  to  disappoint,  even  as  Descartes'  result  disap- 
points. For  the  skeptic  finds  that  he  also  was  in  search 
of  objective  truth :  and  that  the  absolute  truth  of  his 


THE  NEED  OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  193 

statement  is  irrelevant  to  his  quest.    Whence  his  skep- 
ticism toward  objective  truth  remains  unanswered. 


Consider  the  question  of  the  moralist,  who  likewise 
has  an  Absolute  to  seek  —  an  absolute  rule  of  conduct. 

Rules  against  killing,  appropriating  property,  and  the 
like,  have  their  exceptions.  Moral  principles  vary  with 
social  conditions  and  times.  Everything  is  relative : 
is  there  not  some  underlying  principle  that  will  stand- 
ardize all  this  relativity,  and  give  a  substance  to  moral 
certainty?  The  world  waits  for  its  Kant ;  who  provides 
the  reflexive  turn  in  morals.  No  empirical  rule  is  abso- 
lute ;  but  one  fixed  rule  there  is,  —  observe  Rule.  It 
is,  as  Professor  Palmer  puts  it,  the  "law  that  there 
shall  be  law."  Let  your  conduct  be  law-abiding,  law- 
recognizing,  law-constituting ;  if  you  have  exceptions 
to  make  from  any  rule,  let  them  be  made  "on  prin- 
ciple," principle  in  general.  For  the  absolute  Tightness 
lies  not  out  there  among  deeds,  but  in  the  self,  in  its 
fixed  principle  of  duty. 

Shall  we  not  herald  Kant  as  the  savior  of  an  absolute 
morality?  Yes;  —  but  what  exception  to  rule  is  not 
made  on  some  principle  or  other?  Kantian  morality  is 
regarded  as  rigoristic,  but  does  its  rigor  come  from  its 
first  principles,  —  or  from  its  second  principles,  alleged 
deductions  from  the  first,  but  of  doubtful  parentage? 
Kant,  like  Descartes,  must  emerge  into  the  world  of 
objective  situations,  must  appear  with  a  principle  that 
has  somewhat  to  say  about  dealing  with  objects,  with 
beings  beyond  oneself.  Treat  persons  as  ends  in  them- 
selves, says  Kant;  and  herewith,  in  setting  up  an  objec- 


194  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

tive  principle,  he  confesses  that  his  reflexive  turn  does 
not  afford  sufficient  answer  to  our  ethical  enquiry. 


Consider  the  metaphysician's  question :  what  is  the 
absolutely  real?  That,  namely,  which  exists  by  itself, 
not  depending  on  any  other  being  for  existence ;  but 
conferring  being  on  every  other. 

Here  again,  trial  of  various  would-be  realities,  like 
matter,  or  force,  or  energy,  shows  that  they  cannot  be 
what  we  seek.  Matter  disappears,  on  analysis,  into  ac- 
tivity of  energies ;  and  energy  seems  to  disappear  into 
a  definition,  or  formula,  regarding  what  we  may  expect 
from  experience.  No  nameable  thing  can  answer  the 
demand  for  an  objective  Substance.  The  world  waits 
for  its  Berkeley:  who  hits  upon  the  reflexive  turn — 
everything  is  dependent  on  consciousness  except  con- 
sciousness itself.  To  be,  says  Berkeley  triumphantly, 
means  to  be  perceived,  or  to  be  a  perceiver;  reality  is 
consciousness  and  its  world. 

Such  discovery,  following  much  despair  about  finding 
Substance,  cannot  fail  to  excite  much  joy.  The  reflexive 
turn  is  wonderful,  unanswerable  :  yet  strangely  paradox- 
ical, is  it  not? — as  if  for  bread  one  were  given  a  stone, 
one  can  hardly  say  how.  At  last  it  appears  that  what 
one  sought  was  an  absolute  reality  beyond  oneself  ;  for 
one's  ontological  interests  come  from  questions  about 
Fate,  questions  about  what  I  may  expect  from  the  action 
upon  me  of  that  which  extraneous  to  me  is  real.  I  start 
from  the  fact  that  I  do  not  determine  the  contents  of  my 
own  experience  ;  and  no  matter  how  much  you  assure 
me  that  the  Absolute  is  Self,  it  must  still  be  beyond 


THE  NEED   OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  195 

this  self  which  knows  its  own  ignorance  and  so  its 
dependence.  What  you  have  offered  me  for  reality  is 
but  another  Cartesian  I-tbink,  which  must  indeed  (as 
Kant  puts  it)  accompany  all  experience  (or  be  able  to) : 
but  just  because  it  is  a  coefficient  of  all  experience,  it  is 
a  determinant  of  none  —  "  compatible  with  every  relative 
danger."  Useless  for  deductive  purposes.  No  genuine 
answer  to  our  question. 


There  are  not  a  few  other  such  enquiries  and  absolute 
solutions  that  do  not  solve.  There  is  the  quest  for  an 
absolute  good,  or  happiness,  which  brought  out  perhaps 
the  first  pure  case  of  the  reflexive  turn  in  history  —  the 
Stoic  answer,  namely,  that  I  myself  am  my  own  absolute 
good.  Then  there  is  the  religious  quest  itself,  the  quest 
for  "  salvation,"  which  is  a  search  for  an  absolute  secu- 
rity against  death  :  and  which  at  times,  especially  in 
these  latter  times,  has  received  the  answer  "  I  myself 
am  heaven  and  hell " :  or  in  more  adequate  Spinozistic 
reflexion,  my  knowledge  of  the  Eternal  is  my  own  eter- 
nity. Compatible,  all  such  answers,  with  too  much. 

The  same  principle  is  involved  in  all  of  them.  It  is 
the  reflexive  turn  that  makes  the  trouble  and  creates 
the  disappointing  illusion  of  finality.  We  have  reached 
in  each  case  a  universally  valid  answer  —  but  it  is  not 
an  answer  to  our  question :  it  is  an  irrelevant  universal. 
It  has  the  fault  of  retreat  into  the  subject;  a  well- 
exposed  fault  in  the  case  of  Stoicism,  and  of  Berkeleian 
idealism,  and  of  Kantian  morality  (as  criticised,  some- 
what unfairly,  by  Hegel),  a  fault  still  mightily  influential, 
however,  wherever  dialectic  and  idealism  flourish.  It  is 


196  THE   NEED   OF  GOD 

this  reflexive  turn  and  its  products  which  rouses  the 
pragmatic  ire.  If  I  forsake  matter  for  form,  one  may 
say,  I  surrender  my  right  to  regain  any  touch  with 
matter.  If  I  slip  from  the  object  into  the  subject,  let 
me  candidly  forgo  any  power  over  the  object.  If  I 
leave  the  world  of  physics  to  consort  with  pure  spirit, 
let  me  not  claim  any  other  than  a  Platonic  relation  to 
empirical  reality — relation  without  fruit  or  progeny. 
That  too  safe  thing  which  in  denying  I  affirm  is,  after 
all,  something  that  I  have  not  denied  nor  ever  doubted. 
I  sought  an  Absolute  in  the  field  of  man's  work. 


Of  all  these  irrelevant  universals,  found  by  the 
reflexive  turn,  one  surmises  that  they  have  a  certain 
significance,  if  not  that  which  is  claimed  for  them.  It 
cannot  be  worthless  to  have  pointed  out  that  while  our 
world  of  objects  is  refractory,  baffling,  and  offering  no 
point  of  fixity  or  perfect  assurance,  there  is  a  world 
within  where  abiding  satisfaction  obtains :  we  object 
only  to  the  substitution  of  this  latter  world  for  the 
former,  as  a  co-ordinate  and  difference-making  affair. 
Keflexive  turns  are  backward  glances;  and  all  these 
considerations  have  a  worth  looking  backward  which 
they  do  not  possess  looking  forward.  They  "function 
retrospectively  only,  not  prospectively."  In  the  same 
way,  the  pious  soul  thanks  God,  looking  backward,  for 
everything  that  has  happened :  everything  that  has  hap- 
pened is  goody  —  not  so  everything  that  may  happen. 
When  next  I  have  to  thank  God,  let  it  be  for  something 
different ;  and  in  the  meantime  the  guide  to  my  conduct 
will  not  be  that  God-idea  which  has  proved  "compatible 


THE   NEED   OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  197 

with  every  relative  danger."  Some  principle  we  must 
have  which  charges  those  forward-looking  paths  with 
contrast,  which  acts  like  the  physiologist's  stain,  distin- 
guishing tissue  from  tissue.  That  which  is  thus  to  func- 
tion prospectively  cannot  be  this  Absolute. 


Yet  there  are  situations  in  experience  in  which  form 
becomes  matter,  and  the  reflexive  turn  does  acquire  prac- 
tical significance. 

In  the  work  of  science,  for  example,  a  formal  arrange- 
ment of  the  materials  of  a  problem  is  the  beginning  of 
an  explanation.  To  classify  data,  to  establish  external 
connections  among  them,  is  the  beginning  of  mastery ; 
is  a  very  substantial  practical  mastery.  The  assemblage 
and  comparison  of  unknowns  generates  known-ness,  as 
friction  of  cold  and  dark  objects  may  produce  heat  and 
light.  Science  has  begun  to  question  whether  any  other 
conquest  of  Nature  is  either  possible,  or  desirable,  than 
just  this  of  establishing  order  and  law  among  phenom- 
ena —  not  trying  to  penetrate  their  objective  interiors, 
doubting  at  last  whether  there  be  any  such  interiors, 
external  to  ourselves  ;  doubting  whether  ice  are  not  the 
interior  of  Nature.  Here  the  product  of  the  reflexive 
turn  is  accepted  by  nearly  everybody  as  the  only  prac- 
tical thing  in  sight. 

In  moral  affairs,  also,  we  recognize  the  substantiality 
of  the  form  in  certain  limiting  cases.  A  person  who 
wills  to  have  a  good  will,  already  has  a  good  will  —  in 
its  rudiments.  There  is  solid  satisfaction  in  knowing 
that  the  mere  desire  to  get  out  of  an  old  habit  is  a 
material  advance  upon  the  condition  of  submergence  in 


198  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

that  habit.  The  longest  step  toward  cleanliness  is  made 
when  one  gains  —  nothing  but  dissatisfaction  with  dirt. 
Surely  the  work  is  not  finished  —  but  the  obstacles  that 
remain  are  material  only ;  the  fateful  question  was  whether 
one  could  get  the  idea  of  cleanliness,  or  of  truthfulness, 
or  of  the  good-will  generally.  In  that  idea  is  the  reality 
of  the  condition ;  the  practical  questions  are  all  resolv- 
able into  this  one,  — the  maintenance  and  development 
of  that  idea. 

There  is,  then,  in  these  matters  some  absolute  find- 
ing in  the  seeking :  salvation  is,  to  seek  salvation,  for 
in  seeking  it  one  has  already  abandoned  his  mortal- 
ity and  his  sin.  In  religion  or  in  morals  the  question 
can  never  be,  How  much  is  empirically  finished  ?  but 
rather,  What  beginning  is  made?  for  any  beginning  is 
the  birth  of  an  idea,  and  the  anticipation  of  attainment. 
To  cast  off  an  old  type  of  conception  and  forge  a  new 
one  is  the  greatest  of  all  practical  moral  achievements. 
Compatible  with  every  relative  vice,  is  this  Absolute  ? 
Compatible  with  everything  it  rises  upon,  and  there  is 
presumably  nothing  so  vicious  that  the  absolute  cannot 
rise  upon  it  in  the  form  of  idea  :  yet  not  compatible 
with  remaining  therein.  This  merely  formal  conceiving 
of  the  facts  of  one's  own  wretchedness  is  at  the  same 
time  a  departure  from  them  —  placing  them  in  the 
object.  It  is  not  idle,  therefore,  to  observe  reflexively 
that  in  that  very  Thought,  one  has  separated  himself 
from  them,  and  is  no  longer  that  which  empirically  he 
still  sees  himself  to  be. 

In  many  other  connections  do  we  find  "  mere  "  forms 
making  practical  differences.  Nothing  is  more  indiffer- 
ent to  all  its  contents  than  time;  yet  time  is  one  of 


THE   NEED  OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  199 

the  greatest  agents  in  the  social  world.  Long-standing, 
whether  of  customs,  of  offices,  of  friends,  of  peoples,  is 
no  merit,  one  might  say :  yet  it  is  everywhere  operative 
as  such  to  some  degree  (not  preventing  French  revolu- 
tions but  delaying  them).  Age  of  service,  quite  apart 
from  brilliancy  of  service,  claims  gratitude  and  honor- 
able discharge  :  old  age,  of  itself,  apart  from  its  contents 
receives  respect ;  and  antiquity  is  all  but  equivalent  to 
sanctity.  The  mere  mechanical  and  empty  infinity  of 
space  and  time  may  introduce  the  spirit  into  the  pres- 
ence of  Deity ;  and  to  survey  the  Whole,  in  any  capac- 
ity, will  work  differences  in  the  judgment  of  details. 

In  all  such  cases,  that  which  is  found  in  reflexion,  — 
retrospectively, — functions  prospectively  also. 


In  truth,  the  reflexive  thing  is  the  easiest  in  the  world 
to  ignore ;  because  it  does  require  this  almost  un-natural 
reversive  glance  of  thought  to  discover:  and  ignoring 
it  leaves  out  an  essential  in  all  ultimate  solutions.  I  do 
not  say  that  it  is  a  sufficient  solution  of  any  problem  ; 
I  point  out  that  it  is  a  necessary  ingredient  of  the  solu- 
tion. 

Offered  as  a  sufficient  answer,  the  reflexive  turn  is 
indeed  the  essence  of  sentimentality :  hunger  is  not 
relieved  by  Stoical  reflexion  on  the  inward  conditions  of 
happiness  (mentally  inward).  But  to  offer  the  hungry 
a  meal  without  any  of  that  spaciousness  of  idea  which 
the  sentimental  soul  too  fulsomely  invokes ;  to  omit,  I 
Sa7>  y°ur  reference  to  the  Absolute,  somehow  spoils 
the  value  of  your  practical  charity.  I  agree  that  it  is 
well  to  be  meager  of  sentiment :  but  I  merely  indicate 


200  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

a  fact  of  human  nature  when  I  say  that  the  thing  done 
"  in  the  name  of  Christ,"  or  by  one  who  wears  the  cowl, 
or  in  the  simple  presence  of  humanity  to  Idea,  leaves  a 
tinge  of  worth  behind  it  which  no  amount  of  practi- 
cal Aid,  apart  from  the  "  irrelevant  universal "  could 
accomplish. 


It  is  no  sufficient  solution  of  grief  to  say  that  grief 
must  have  a  solution  ;  but  the  only  hopeless  grief  is  that 
which  abandons  the  postulate  that  grief  has  any  mean- 
ing. Point  out  that  in  holding  to  that  postulate  there 
is  already  a  superiority  to  the  condition  that  depresses 
one ;  and  you  reveal  a  situation  which  caught  in  idea 
does  materially  lighten  the  grief.  To  know  that  suffer- 
ing is  a  common  human  lot  may  not  empirically  change 
the  contents  of  pain ;  yet  there  is  no  reflexion  which 
more  substantially  relieves  the  pressure  of  actual  dis- 
tress. Let  me  take  my  bereavement,  said  Epictetus,  as 
I  take  the  bereavement  of  my  neighbor:  yes,  but  not 
because  you  look  coldly  on  his  trouble  —  rather,  because 
you  are  free  to  reflect  in  his  case  what  must  enter  as 
idea  into  your  own,  that  this  is  the  lot  of  man,  — 
through  which  irrelevant  universal  fact,  see  mankind 
actually  held  in  closer  unity.  To  see  in  the  man  before 
me  my  brother  does  not  help  me  to  deal  with  him ;  does 
not  substitute  for  judgment,  discretion,  antagonism  in 
its  place ;  does  the  idea  then  do  no  work  ?  Let  him 
answer  who  is  able  to  hold  the  fact  of  brotherhood 
before  his  mind,  in  the  midst  of  his  antagonism. 


THE   NEED   OF   AN  ABSOLUTE  201 

So  long  as  the  mind  is  admitted  a  part  of  reality  at 
all,  it  must  be  a  material  part.  Differences  which  are 
made  to  mind  must  tend  to  become  differences  to  mat- 
ter. The  presence  of  reason,  though  it  does  no  more 
than  throw  its  noose  of  idea  over  the  contents  of  experi- 
ence, makes  different  every  experience.  Reason  has  the 
function  of  leading  to  pleasure  and  avoiding  pain ;  but 
the  default  of  reason  which  exposes  to  pain  adds  still 
another  pain  —  the  pain  of  the  defect  of  reason.  Self- 
consciousness,  like  other  psychoses,  leaves  tracks  in  the 
brain  ;  our  physical  groundwork  takes  notes  of  our 
reflexive  doings  as  of  other  doings,  and  transmits  the 
habits  of  our  ideal  attitudes.  The  irrelevant  universal 
to  all  our  experiences  is  collectively  named,  the  Self ; 
the  Subject,  present  to  all  experience,  inclusive  of  all, 
compatible  with  all ;  yet  if  this  self  were  indeed  indiffer- 
ent to  all,  useless  for  deductive  purposes,  Self  could 
never  have  become  its  own  object,  self -consciousness 
would  be  impossible.  In  being  thought  of,  the  self 
is  made  a  member  of  the  world  of  experience,  and 
acknowledged  as  active  there.  It  is  thought  of,  be- 
cause in  being  thought  with,  it  has  had  differences 
to  make. 

And  here  may  we  not  observe  how  the  internal  rela- 
tion of  idea  to  value  becomes  also  an  external  relation, 
determining  differences  of  conduct  ?  The  maintenance 
of  the  idea  of  the  Absolute  in  any  subject-matter  is  a 
matter  of  effort  and  of  will ;  the  degree  of  value  which 
any  situation  or  prospect  may  have  is  dependent  upon 
the  actual  operation  of  an  irrelevant  universal  which  a 
reflexive  turn  of  thought  might  discover.  But  an  altera- 
tion of  value  is  an  alteration  of  conduct.  This  is  the 


202  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

substance  of  our  answer  to  the  question  regarding  the 
worth  of  the  Absolute.1 


The  absolutes  which  are  found  in  the  reflexive  turn  of 
thought  are  not  useless,  even  prospectively.  But  their 
functioning  has  seldom  or  never  been  understood,  even 
by  those  who  have  hit  upon  them  :  and  this  is,  in  part, 
because  they  have  often  failed  to  observe  that  the  reflex- 
ive turn  reveals  never  alone  the  Absolute  within,  but 
always  the  Absolute  within  in  conjunction  with  the 
Absolute  without. 

The  whole  tale  of  Descartes'  discovery  is  not  told  in  the 
proposition,  I  exist,  knowing.  It  is  rather  told  in  the 
proposition,  I  exist,  knowing  the  Absolute;  or,  I  exist, 
knowing  God.  The  self,  taken  alone,  or  in  presence  of 
contents  of  experience  as  they  come,  is  a  fairly  irrele- 
vant universal.  But  set  before  that  self  in  its  dealings 
with  experience  an  Absolute  Object ;  and  its  own  exist- 
ence becomes  fruitful  of  differences.  For  note  : 

The  self  might  conceivably  be  a  passive  spectator  of 
the  contents  of  experience,  accepting  "  the  colours  of 
good  and  evil "  as  unalterable  fact.  That  which  starts 
the  search  for  the  Absolute  is  an  unwillingness  to  take 
things  in  this  way.  Beside  the  love  for  the  satisfactory 
contents  of  life,  there  is  a  most  remarkable  love  of  life 
itself —  in  distinction  from  its  contents,  even  if  the  con- 
tents are  generally  bad;  some  in  whom  this  love  of 
existence  is  strong  have  said  that  they  would  prefer  to 
endure  hell  rather  than  to  be  extinguished  —  a  most 
inexplicable  attachment,  this,  to  the  bare  fact  of  exist- 

1  See  further,  Part  VI,  The  Fruits  of  Religion,  chs.  xxxi  and  xxxii. 


THE  NEED  OF  AN  ABSOLUTE  203 

ing,  being  conscious,  without  reference  to  the  contents 
of  consciousness.  Surely,  if  ever  there  were  a  blind 
valuation  of  an  empty  husk  of  irrelevant  universal, 
it  is  here.  Yet,  with  our  interpretation  of  value,1  is  not 
this  same  celebrated  and  mysterious  "instinct  of  self- 
preservation,"  the  most  fundamentally  rational  of  all 
practicalities  ?  For  life  is  but  a  certain  consciousness  of 
the  Absolute,  in  process  of  application  ;  and  the  applica- 
tion of  this  Idea  is  the  substance  of  all  positive  worth, 
conferring  upon  "contents"  what  quality  they  have. 
Attachment  to  life  is  simply  attachment  to  the  source 
of  value;  and  that  which  appears  evil  does  so  appear 
because  the  Real  cannot  be  recognized  in  it,  creates  a 
problem  of  which  the  living  thing  already  holds  the  key. 
Evil  becomes  a  problem,  only  because  the  consciousness 
of  the  Absolute  is  there :  apart  from  this  fact,  the  "col- 
our of  evil "  would  be  mere  contents  of  experience. 


It  is  true,  then,  that  What  Is  makes  no  difference ; 
that  which  produces  difference  is  Consciousness  of  What 
Is. 

This  pair  of  Absolutes,  or  Absolute-pair,  which  we 
above  described  as  Character  in  presence  of  Nature,  is 
well  capable  of  producing  practical  difference ;  might 
well  be  described  as  the  original  source  of  all  difference, 
perhaps.  For  if  we  begin  with  simply  a  consciousness, 
and  its  object-absolute  (not  Sein  and  Nicht-sein,  but 
Sein  and  Bewusstsein)  we  have  all  that  is  necessary  to 
develop  change  (Werden).  It  is  notorious  that  what 
endures  before  consciousness  does  not  endure  the  same; 

1  Chapter  xi,  above. 


204  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

this  fact  has  its  psycho-physical  explanation,  its  Weber's 
law,  and  the  like :  its  essential  explanation  may  be  this, 
that  any  object  of  consciousness,  simply  as  object,  i.e., 
as  case  of  Reality,  is  so  far  goody  and  therefore  —  to  be 
approached,  or  increased  in  vividness.  Whereas  what 
simply  stays  as  blind  datum  is  in  its  mere  persistence  bad, 
to  be  withdrawn  from,  diminished  in  vividness  to  zero. 
Briefly,  Sein  and  Bewusstsein  together  give  Werden. 


The  Absolute,  after  all,  is  not  an  escapable  practical 
problem ;  and  no  showing  that  wrong  solutions  have 
been  forthcoming  will  destroy  the  practical  worth  of 
the  right  solution.  Knowledge  of  the  Absolute  re- 
mains as  practically  significant  as  the  question  which 
perennially  gives  rise  to  the  search  for  it. 

And  this  question  always  calls  for  just  such  an  indif- 
ferent object  as  the  absolutes,  in  each  of  our  various 
cases,  turned  out  to  be.  If  we  could  accept  the  differ- 
ences of  experience  as  they  stand,  there  would  be  no 
problem  of  unity ;  but  if  we  cannot  accept  them,  there 
is  nothing  to  look  for  but  an  in-different.  Either  we 
are  content  with  conditional  certainties,  or  we  seek  a 
certainty  that  holds  everywhere,  —  and  is  thus  com- 
patible with  everything.  If  the  absolute  good  were  not 
compatible  with  every  relative  evil,  it  would  not  be  the 
absolute  good.  If  the  Absolute  were  not  compatible 
with  every  relative  danger,  it  would  not  be  the  Abso- 
lute. That  which  holds  good,  no  matter  what  occurs, 
—  that  is  precisely  the  object  of  our  search. 


THE  NEED   OF   AN   ABSOLUTE  205 

Such  an  object  is  no  modern  discovery.  From  the 
beginning  of  religious  thought,  in  the  very  conception 
of  a  creator,  there  has  been  present  to  the  mind  of  man 
a  Being  who  is  present  alike  in  good  and  evil.  In 
quite  ancient  times,  as  times  go,  we  may  find  a  wholly 
explicit  definition  of  such  a  Being  as  the  desire  of  all 
mankind.  The  founder  of  a  popular  religion  held  up 
to  the  minds  of  a  spell-bound  multitude,  as  his  own 
original  revelation,  a  God  who  "  maketh  his  sun  to  rise 
on  the  evil  and  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just 
and  the  unjust."  Upon  this  basis  he  defined  the  "per- 
fection "  of  God,  and  summoned  men  to  the  same  per- 
fection, the  same  absolute  bearing.  Thereby  he  defined 
an  attitude  of  mind  which  was  indeed  new  in  that 
world,  an  attitude  of  equal  treatment  toward  friend 
and  enemy,  toward  good  and  bad,  —  an  attitude  much 
garbled  and  misunderstood,  but  an  attitude  wholly  intel- 
ligible in  the  light  of  that  unmistakable  description  of 
the  Absolute  God.  For  how  could  the  new  attitude  be 
better  defined  than  as  an  attitude  of  absolute  justice, 
a  thing  quite  alien  to  the  proportionate  justice  of  the 
Greeks,  wonderfully  similar  to  absolute  in-difference  and 
in-justice  ?  Is  this  attitude  then  actually  in-different, 
and  useless  for  deductive  purposes  ?  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  the  only  radically  creative  attitude  yet  known  to 
humanity.  Its  operation  was  dimly  announced  some 
six  hundred  years  earlier  by  a  solitary  Chinese  sage, 
who  said :  "  I  meet  good  with  good,  that  good  may  be 
maintained ;  I  meet  evil  with  good  that  good  may  be 
created."  Do  we  not  here  discover  the  Absolute  func- 
tioning prospectively  ? 

The  secret  of  this  creativeness  we  shall  in  time  pursue 


206  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

in  some  detail, l  at  present  it  is  sufficient  to  refer  to  our 
own  doctrine  of  the  substance  of  Value.  There  is  we 
may  presume,  something  in  the  mere  fact  of  divine  at- 
tention to  objects  which  confers  value  upon  them ;  or  to 
put  it  in  the  language  of  Professor  Royce,  it  may  be 
that  divine  attention  is  the  same  thing  as  divine  love, 
and  that  love  of  this  sort  is  the  one  thing  in  the  world 
that  is  creative. 


We  could  not  live  without  the  Absolute,  nor  without 
our  idea  of  the  Absolute.  I  do  not  say  that  the  Abso- 
lute is  equivalent  to  God ;  I  say  that  God,  whatever  else 
he  may  be,  must  needs  also  be  the  Absolute.  Thus, 
accepting  fully  the  pragmatic  guide  to  truth,  we  con- 
clude that  the  only  satisfying  truth  must  be  absolute, 
—  that  is,  non-pragmatic.  Wherewith,  pragmatism  ends 
in  consuming  itself ;  appears  as  a  self-refuting  theory. 

1  See  especially  chapter  xxxi. 


CHAPTER   XV 
THE  NEED   OF  A  GOD1 

IN  our  usual  conceptions  of  God,  the  One  and  Abso- 
lute is  raised  to  the  level  of  personality  and  moral 
quality.  These  latter  characters  are  indeed  more  con- 
spicuous, both  in  current  meaning  and  in  history,  than 
either  unity  or  absoluteness.  They  may  well  be  regarded 
as  the  most  humanly  valuable  attributes  of  the  divine 
nature.  Yet  they  are  the  oftenest  subject  to  criticism 
and  doubt.  More  in  their  case,  perhaps,  than  in  that 
of  the  others  will  it  be  important  to  enquire  whether 
they  are  needful  features  of  our  Whole-idea. 

In  a  recent  book  by  Mr.  McTaggart,  called  "  Some 
Dogmas  of  Religion  "  this  question  is  discussed  2  in  so 
clear,  frank,  and  radical  fashion  that  we  shall  gain  much 
by  stating  our  view  in  relation  to  his. 


If  the  thought  of  God  is  of  any  worth  to  us,  says 
McTaggart,  it  must  be  either  because  of  what  God  is, 
or  because  of  what  God  does.  It  is  conceivable  that  to 
believe  in  the  simple  existence  of  a  being  having  such 
character  and  powers  as  we  suppose  God  to  have  would 
make  life  better  worth  living  for  us.  It  is  also  con- 

1  In  somewhat  different  form,  this  chapter  was  read  as  a  critical  paper 
before  the  Philosophical  Union  of  the  University  of  California  in  1907. 

2  In  the  concluding  chapter,  entitled  "  Theism  and  Happiness." 


208  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

ceivable  that  apart  from  his  character  and  attributes, 
we  should  set  store  on  the  thought  of  what  God  does 
or  can  do  for  us  and  for  the  world  at  large.  Let  us 
estimate  each  of  these  two  conceivable  values  of  the 
God-idea,  beginning  with  the  supposed  works  of  God. 

God's  presence  in  the  universe  means  to  most  believers 
the  presence  of  a  very  powerful  champion  of  certain 
righteous  causes  of  immense  historic  range.  We  think 
of  God  as  a  vindicator,  working  out  that  deeper  jus- 
tice which  shall  bring  together  at  last  the  innermost 
merit  and  its  external  recognition.  We  think  of  him 
perhaps  as  causing  happiness  and  brotherhood  to  pre- 
vail among  men  at  some  future  time.  Or  we  think  of 
him  simply  as  security  to  our  souls  that  in  some  hidden 
way  all  is  well,  or  will  be  well,  with  the  world. 

But  every  legitimate  hope  or  confidence  must  have 
some  foundation  in  experience  or  reason :  the  sort  of 
thing  we  are  pleased  to  believe  must  be  at  least  not- 
inconsistent  with  what  the  world  as  it  is  shows  us.  If 
God  exists,  there  are  certain  conditions  existing  in  the 
same  world  with  him  which  throw  light  on  his  char- 
acter and  powers.  Unmerited,  random,  and  general 
suffering  are  conditions,  not  theories.  Iniquity  and 
degradation  are  conditions.  Nowhere  do  we  have  to 
search  for  evil  amid  the  good  :  we  have  to  search  for 
the  good  amid  the  evil.  Further,  what  good  we  have 
is  unstable  in  its  whole  fabric,  as  if  it  were  upheld 
against  the  nature  of  things :  life  is  a  constant  fight 
against  decay ;  civilization  a  perpetual  struggle  against 
dissolution  ;  and  virtue  itself  incessant  strain  against 
the  clamor  of  flesh  and  the  devil.  Now  God  —  if  he 
exists — has  either  permitted  this,  or  else  ft  exists  in 


THE  NEED  OF  A  GOD  209 

spite  of  him :  in  either  case  what  can  we  reasonably 
depend  upon  for  the  future? 

It  is  the  same  dilemma  on  which  McTaggart  has 
often  insisted.  If  there  were  an  all-powerful  God,  the 
defects  in  his  world  would  show  defects  in  his  charac- 
ter. Whereas,  if  God  is  wholly  good,  and  therefore 
not  all-powerful,  it  is  at  least  possible  that  the  mass  of 
evil  in  the  world  may  prove  greater  that  he  can  cope 
with.  In  either  case,  the  works  of  God  are  of  no  very 
tangible  value. 

In  truth,  these  supposable  works  of  God  would  be  of 
no  value  at  all  for  human  happiness  until  we  had  some 
further  knowledge  about  them.  We  should  have  to 
enquire,  as  best  we  can,  how  this  world  is  constituted  ; 
and  what  are  the  actual  forces  at  work  ;  we  should 
have  to  estimate  from  the  basis  of  our  own  experience 
what  the  likelihood  is  of  any  conquest  of  evil  whatever. 
We  must  carry  our  science  to  the  point  of  metaphysics 
by  our  own  unaided  efforts  before  we  are  warranted  in 
taking  any  satisfaction  in  the  contemplation  of  what 
God  may  do  for  us.  And  in  the  progress  of  this  meta- 
physical work,  we  are  likely  to  discover — so  McTag- 
gart intimates  —  that  good  can  gain  the  upper  hand  of 
evil  without  the  assistance  of  a  God.  Idealism,  which 
resolves  matter  into  spirit,  and  shows  that  against  spirit 
matter  must  be  ultimately  powerless  ;  especially  per- 
sonal idealism,  which  puts  the  power  of  spirit  into  the 
joint  possession  of  a  co-operating  society  of  persons 
such  as  this  world  of  ours  in  some  measure  already  is, 
and  may  in  larger  measure  become,  without  limit,  — 
especially  personal  idealism  may  give  us  all  that  God 
has  been  supposed  to  offer,  and  without  the  moral 


210  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

detriments  involved  in  relying  upon  a  supernatural 
ally  for  doing  the  work  of  men.  Happiness  depends 
(so  far  as  events  are  concerned)  on  grasping  that  total 
law  and  tendency  of  things,  wherein  we  can  read  the 
ultimate  doom  of  all  existing  defects  in  our  condition  ; 
and  it  is  more  than  possible  that  this  law  may  be  found 
in  our  own  personal  and  social  nature,  if  we  but  pene- 
trate to  its  foundations. 

So  much  for  the  appearance  of  God  in  the  sweep  of 
human  history.  But  how  about  that  part  of  individual 
destiny  that  lies  beyond  human  sight?  It  has  been 
believed  that  men  cannot  be  wholly  happy  without  the 
expectation  of  immortality,  and  the  supernatural  com- 
pensations that  have  become  associated  with  that  belief. 
In  reply,  McTaggart  points  out  two  things.  First,  that 
immortality  is  no  more  an  unquestionable  benefit  than 
are  the  visible  works  of  God.  Certain  great  religions 
of  the  East,  as  well  as  certain  philosophies  of  the  West, 
have  led  men  to  find  their  highest  good  in  personal 
extinction.  And  secondly,  hope  of  immortality  does 
not  depend  on  belief  in  God.  It  is  possible  that  the 
soul  is  intrinsically  superior  to  the  crises  of  material 
bodies,  even  if  it  were  a  solitary  being  in  the  cosmos. 
The  prospect  of  individual  immortality  must  be  gained 
if  at  all  by  the  same  painstaking  scientific  and  metaphys- 
ical enquiries  as  justify  our  confidence  in  human  wel- 
fare :  we  must  learn  of  what  stuff  we  are  made,  and  what 
sort  of  contingency  that  stuff  is  intrinsically  subject  to. 
An  immortality  thus  established  would  be  much  more 
satisfactory  to  our  thought  than  one  dependent  upon 
the  good  will  of  a  finite  God :  for  it  would  be  founded 
upon  the  nature  of  things.  God  and  immortality  are 


THE  NEED  OF  A  GOD  211 

wholly  separable  articles  of  faith,  and  no  interest  which 
we  may  have  in  the  one  can  lend  any  interest  to  the 
other. 

The  works  of  God,  then,  do  not  at  once  recommend 
him  to  our  needs.  But  we  may  still  have  an  interest 
in  his  existence,  for  the  sake  of  the  guidance,  or  the 
encouragement,  or  the  love  and  worship  which  his 
presence  in  the  universe  would  provide.  Let  us  again 
look  closely  and  consider  what  these  things  are  worth. 

As  far  as  guidance  is  concerned,  the  moral  ideal  is 
one  which  we  can  never  discover  unless  we  already  bear 
it  in  ourselves.  Given  a  God,  we  should  first  needs 
pass  judgment  upon  him,  on  the  basis  of  our  own  knowl- 
edge of  good  and  evil,  before  adopting  him  as  our 
standard.  It  is  true  that  we  need  the  suggestion  of  a 
quality,  oftentimes,  in  something  beyond  us,  before  that 
germ  which  is  in  us  can  awaken  to  life.  But  this  type 
of  suggestion  is  much  more  available  in  our  fellow  men 
than  in  the  mere  thought  of  a  God  whom  we  do  not 
see,  and  whose  acts  we  can  only  infer.  Guidance  must 
stand  very  close  to  us  to  be  of  any  value.  The  circum- 
stance that  God  is  god  and  not  man  makes  any  applica- 
tion of  his  character  to  our  own  case  difficult,  even  if 
we  perfectly  knew  his  character.  Hence  men  have  been 
fascinated  by  the  conception  of  the  God-incarnate,  vis- 
ible in  the  flesh,  in  all  points  tempted  like  as  we  are. 
But  just  in  so  far  as  even  the  divine  man  fights  evil 
with  the  weapons  of  God,  and  not  with  those  of  men, 
his  case  fails  to  be  applicable  to  mine  ;  and  the  guidance 
fails.  What  is  done  by  man  we  can  call  upon  men  to 
reach ;  what  is  done  by  the  god-man  stands  just  beyond 


212  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

the  region  of  my  responsibility.  What  goodness,  in 
the  end,  can  effectively  guide  and  inspire  us  but  the 
goodness  which  we  observe  and  recognize  in  those  whom 
we  must  judge  to  be  in  all  essentials  such  as  we  our- 
selves are? 

But  there  are  still  other  interests  than  this  one  of 
moral  guidance  to  which  the  existence  of  a  God  might 
minister.  There  is  the  encouragement  which  some 
minds  find  in  considering  that  there  is  in  the  world  one 
morally  sublime  person.  There  is  the  comfort  which 
others  find  in  the  thought  of  a  moral  leader  whose  sur- 
vey is  great  enough  to  include  the  whole  field :  if  I  am 
too  weak  to  fathom  the  total  meaning  and  drift  of 
things,  it  is  good  to  think  that  there  is  one  who  does. 
Loss  of  such  value  as  this  encouragement  and  comfort 
might  bring  would  not  be  wholly  made  good  by  human 
substitutes :  yet  the  gap  that  would  appear  in  the  world 
would,  in  all  probability,  not  be  irreparable.  Eemem- 
ber  that  God,  if  he  exists,  is  at  best  an  imperfect  Being. 
God  cannot  escape  his  share  of  the  imperfection  which, 
in  this  universal  society  of  imperfect  spirits,  is  a  run- 
ning stain.  What  men  can  lose  in  the  loss  of  a  God 
like  this,  is  only  such  value  as  they  may  regain,  in  some 
degree  if  not  in  full,  in  their  fellows.  When  men 
believed  in  the  divine  right  of  kings,  they  could  not  but 
apprehend  that  the  spirit  of  loyalty  must  vanish  in  the 
spread  of  democracy.  But  loyalty  lives,  not  less  but 
possibly  more,  in  the  government  of  society  "by  itself 
than  in  the  alleged  divine  kingdoms.  So  with  the  loss 
of  the  conceived  God,  something  of  spiritual  shelter  and 
canopy  is  removed,  without  which  the  soul  may  well  for 
a  time  feel  naked  and  alone :  "  There  will  be  no  one 


THE  NEED  OF  A  GOD  213 

to  worship,  and  there  will  be  one  person  less  to  love." 
But  reverence  and  love  are  not  left  without  objects : 
and  who  knows  but  that  the  necessity  of  confining 
the  range  of  these  highest  of  human  sentiments  to  the 
members  and  causes  of  visible  society  will  in  time 
exalt  human  relations,  and  accelerate  the  attainment 
of  perfection  ? 

"  Whether  the  friends  whom  all  men  may  find  could 
compensate  for  the  friend  whom  some  men  thought  they 
had  found  is  a  question  for  earch  man  to  answer.  It  is 
a  question  which  can  never  be  answered  permanently 
in  the  negative  while  there  is  still  a  future  before  us." 
Thus  McTaggart  closes  his  argument. 

II 

This  argument  makes  remarkably  vivid  to  what 
degree  the  values  commonly  centered  in  God  are  repro- 
duced in  kind  in  other  relationships,  to  nature,  to  friend, 
and  to  society.  Mr.  McTaggart  has  mentioned  no  value 
of  God  unique  in  kind  except  the  value  of  worship,  and 
even  this  seems  to  him  fairly  well  recovered  in  human 
reverence.  One  might  question  whether  all  possible 
values  of  a  personal  God  had  been  considered ;  whether 
the  primary  worth  of  such  a  being  is  not  unique  in 
kind,  such  as  the  worth  of  these  other  relationships 
would  not  substitute  for.  But  without  pressing  this 
point,  I  wish  first  to  call  attention  to  certain  logical 
peculiarities  of  the  argument. 

One  is  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  argument  is  highly 
tentative  and  hypothetical,  calling  for  further  meta- 
physical investigation,  and  depending  for  its  proposed 
substitutes  for  the  worth  of  God  on  what  metaphysical 


214  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

investigation  might  probably  show,  if  we  once  vigor- 
ously put  ourselves  to  it. 

I  cannot  but  assent  to  this  call  for  metaphysical 
enquiry.  I  believe  with  McTaggart  that  men  have  no 
right  to  the  satisfactions  which  their  religion  affords 
them  except  as  they  earn  that  right  by  successful  meta- 
physical thought.  We  cannot  pass  at  once  from  our 
needs  to  the  satisfaction  thereof,  without  considering 
what  that  reality  is  from  which  we  must  obtain  satisfac- 
tion. "What  people  want/'  says  McTaggart,  "is  a  re- 
ligion they  can  believe  to  be  true";  than  which  nothing 
could  be  better  said.  Yet  right  as  McTaggart  is  in 
referring  us  to  metaphysical  thought  to  find  the  objects 
on  which  we  shall  hang  our  major  values,  just  so  wrong 
is  he  in  basing  conclusions  on  what  such  enquiry  may 
probably  show.  For  in  advance  of  the  actual  enquiry, 
there  can  be  no  probabilities  in  the  case:  metaphysical 
thought  will  show  one  thing,  or  it  will  show  another; 
but  forecastings  of  what  it  may  show  signify  simply 
nothing.  In  order  that  there  may  be  any  probability 
in  a  given  field  of  enquiry,  something  in  that  field 
must  be  certain.  Probabilities  support  themselves  inva- 
riably on  known  laws.  Hence  any  enquiry  which 
attempts  to  find  the  basis  of  all  certainty,  the  ultimate 
thing,  is  in  advance  of  all  possible  use  of  probabilities; 
it  is  trying  to  pave  the  way  for  them — they  cannot  pave 
the  way  for  it.  Hence  no  metaphysical  hypothesis  is 
antecedently  more  probable  than  any  other. 

It  follows  that  as  long  as  we  have  only  probabilities 
and  hypotheses  to  refer  to  in  these  matters  we  have 
nothing  at  all.  If  the  belief  in  God  is  simply  an  hypoth- 
esis, as  for  McTaggart  it  seems  to  be,  we  should  be  more 


THE   NEED  OF  A  GOD  215 

radical  than  he ;  we  should  say  outright  that  it  is  worth 
nothing  at  all.  Ideas  have  certain  sustaining  powers, 
even  though  they  are  wholly  our  own  fabrications ;  but 
no  idea  that  is  such  a  pure  launch  of  our  own  imagina- 
tion into  the  unknown — and  nothing  more  —  has  any 
permanent  sustaining  power.  We  must  take  McTaggart 
strictly,  therefore,  at  his  own  word,  and  demand  that 
all  attempts  at  circumstantial  evidence  on  questions  of 
dogma  be  excluded  as  irrelevant;  that  religion  shall 
at  all  points  be  built  on  metaphysical  knowledge  and 
nothing  else.  God  can  be  of  any  worth  to  man  only 
in  so  far  as  he  is  a  known  God. 

Happily,  metaphysical  knowledge  is  the  most  univer- 
sal kind  of  knowledge;  the  infant's  first  thoughts  are 
metaphysical,  that  is  to  say,  thoughts  of  Reality — though 
not  by  name  and  title.  The  chance  for  finding  God  of 
;  general  human  value  is  built  on  the  prospect  that  God 
may  be  found  in  experience,  '  experience '  being  the 
region  of  our  continuous  contact  with  metaphysical 
reality. 

Now  God  can  appear  in  experience  only  through  some 
working  of  his.  If  no  effect  of  God  were  visible  in  the 
world,  his  existence  must  be  always  a  matter  of  conjec- 
ture. Or  if  God  works  in  the  world,  but  in  such  man- 
ner that  we  can  never  identify  any  work  as  his,  his 
existence  must  be  a  matter  of  conjecture.  If  God's 
whole  office  in  our  behalf  is  that  of  touching  only  the 
august  and  inaccessible  points  of  destiny, —  to  decide 
our  birth,  to  sit  in  remote  judgment  upon  our  deeds,  to 
record  the  secret  fact  of  our  salvation,  or  otherwise  to 
carry  into  effect  our  fortunes  in  the  other  world — his 


216  THE   NEED  OF  GOD 

existence  must  be  a  matter  of  conjecture.  It  is  because 
McTaggart  thinks  of  the  "  works  of  God  "  in  some  such 
way  as  this  that  it  seems  to  him  necessary  to  reason 
around  and  away  to  them ;  that  he  can  balance  so  spec- 
ulatively  the  chances  that  such  a  Being  exists.  It  does 
not  occur  to  him  that  the  metaphysical  knowledge  of 
God  might  be  empirical,  i.e.,  based  on  his  manifestation 
in  human  concerns.  Yet  I  venture  to  say  that  unless 
God  does  operate  within  experience  in  an  identifiable 
manner,  speculation  will  not  find  him,  and  may  be  aban- 
doned. The  need  for  metaphysical  thought  arises 
(I  venture  the  paradox)  just  because  God  is  matter  of 
experience,  because  he  works  there  and  is  known  there 
in  his  works.  I  must  enlarge  upon  this  assertion  to 
some  extent. 

If  we  consider  the  first  out-croppings  of  the  God-idea 
in  history,  we  do  not  find  that  men  begin  by  connect- 
ing God  with  unseen  effects.  He  is  the  invisible  cause 
of  very  evident  effects.  Were  it  not  for  these  effects,  it 
is  difficult  to  think  that  the  idea  of  an  invisible  cause 
would  have  arisen.  Men  do  not  first  imagine  a  God  in 
abstractor  then  speculate  about  his  possible  powers,  and 
then  at  last  enquire  whether  such  a  Being  exists.  They 
begin  at  the  other  end.  They  find  their  God  (as  James 
puts  it)  in  rebus.  They  are  impressed  by  powers 
which  actually  operate  in  Nature  and  society;  they  attrib- 
ute to  these  powers  substantial,  that  is  metaphysical, 
being.  They  learn  in  time  that  various  powers  can  be 
manifestations  of  a  single  power.  They  come  to  see  that 
in  the  struggle  of  powers  among  themselves,  one  power 
must  be  supreme,  and  only  one  can  be  supreme.  If  they 


THE   NEED  OF  A  GOD  217 

have  called  the  several  powers  gods,  they  call  the  supreme 
power  God;  and  God  is  thereby  defined  in  terms  of  the 
interest  which  the  human  mind  cannot  but  have  in  what- 
ever power  is  supreme  in  man's  own  world.  In  such 
a  development  of  thought,  there  can  be  no  place  for  an 
enquiry  whether  God  exists,  or  whether  belief  in  him 
has  any  importance :  for  the  existence  and  importance 
are  the  fixed  points  in  the  problem,  —  the  uncertain  ele- 
ments being  the  fancies  as  to  the  nature  of  God's  inner 
being,  his  private  life.  Doubts  must  attach  themselves 
not  to  the  question  whether  God  is  and  works ;  but  to 
the  question  what  his  works  in  reality  are ;  what  we  shall 
think  of  their  tendency  and  quality ;  what  we  can  know 
about  the  inner  nature  of  that  Being  which  we  have  iden- 
tified simply  as  The  Supreme  Power. 

Am  I  willing  to  accept  the  full  consequences  of  the 
position  here  taken,  —  namely,  that  if  the  personal  and 
moral  aspect  of  supreme  power  has  any  worth,  that  as- 
pect will  be  found  in  experience  also  ?  I  am  willing. 
But  we  shall  have  to  search  well  in  order  to  identify 
such  an  experience. 

Ill 

The  essential  value  of  the  personal  attributes  of  the 
Supreme  Power  is  not  to  be  found  by  those  who  simply 
look  forward.  It  is  important  to  know  what  we  may 
expect ;  it  is  important,  as  we  were  saying,  to  be  able  to 
be  hopeful.  But  for  human  nature  much  more  than 
good  prospects  are  necessary  to  happiness.  One  must 
be  able  to  approve  the  world  as  it  is ;  one  must  even 
be  able  to  look  backward  without  a  shudder.  We 
must  provide  for  the  safe-conduct  of  the  excursions  of 


218  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

the  human  mind,  not  alone  for  those  of  the  actual 
human  being  —  such  is  the  universality,  or  shall  I  say 
generosity,  of  that  side  of  our  nature  to  which  religion 
appeals.  We  must  find  some  worth  in  God  that  we 
cannot  find  in  the  forward  look  of  evolution. 

Let  me  put  the  matter  thus  :  we  must  be  free  to  open 
ourselves,  wholly,  in  imagination  and  in  fact  if  need  be, 
to  the  whole  of  human  experience.  If  there  is  anything 
which  destiny  may  thrust  upon  us,  or  has  thrust  upon 
others,  and  which  we  have  to  hide  from  or  banish  from 
thought,  we  are  not  happy.  If  beasts  must  suffer  to 
supply  my  table,  and  I  cannot  open  my  mind  to  the 
fact  of  their  suffering,  I  cannot  be  unqualifiedly  happy 
at  my  table.  If  men  have  been  tortured  to  establish 
the  civilization  I  enjoy,  and  I  cannot  face  the  reality  of 
their  torture,  I  am  not  happy  in  my  historical  position. 
If  I  can  reconcile  myself  to  the  certainty  of  death  only 
by  forgetting  it,  I  am  not  happy.  And  if  I  can  dis- 
pose of  the  fact  of  human  misery  about  me  only  by 
shutting  my  thoughts  as  well  as  myself  within  my  com- 
fortable garden,  I  may  assure  myself  that  I  am  happy, 
but  I  am  not.  There  is  a  skeleton  in  the  closet  of  the 
universe ;  and  I  may  at  any  moment  be  in  face  of  it. 
Happiness  is  inseparable  from  confidence  in  action  ;  and 
confidence  of  action  is  inseparable  from  what  the  school- 
men called  peace  —  that  is,  poise  of  mind  with  reference 
to  everything  I  may  possibly  encounter  in  the  chances 
of  fortune. 

Now  this  perfect  openness  to  experience  is  not  possi- 
ble if  pain  is  the  last  word  of  pain.  Unless  there  is 
something  behind  the  fact  of  pain,  some  kind  of  mys- 
tery or  problem  in  it  whose  solution  shows  the  pain  to 


THE  NEED  OF  A  GOD  219 

be  other  than  it  pretends,  there  is  no  happiness  for  man 
in  this  world  or  the  next ;  for  no  matter  how  fair  the 
world  might  in  time  become,  the  fact  that  it  had  been 
as  bad  as  it  is  would  remain  an  unbanishable  misery, 
unbanishable  by  God  or  any  other  power.  If  we  are 
bound  to  be  as  fixedly  final  in  our  valuation  of  evil  in 
general  as  Mr.  McTaggart  is,  taking  it  at  its  face  value, 
as  pure  bad  and  nothing  more,  then  we  must  not  only 
accept  his  conclusion  that  the  supreme  power  in  this 
world  is  of  very  mixed  worth,  such  as  only  the  continued 
perpetration  of  mixed  products  can  be  expected  from : 
we  must  also  accept  such  an  imprisonment  of  thought 
in  its  contemplation  of  the  world  and  of  destiny  as  must 
ruin  the  peace  of  any  out-living  soul.  The  fact  is,  that 
men  have  never  taken  their  troubles  that  way :  they 
have  always  assumed  that  pain  is  to  be  explained.  And 
if  this  attitude  is  in  any  degree  justified,  important  con- 
sequences follow  —  namely,  that  no  degree  of  evil  what- 
ever can  constitute  an  absolute  condemnation  of  life ; 
for  it  would  be  always  possible  that  further  application 
of  the  same  solvent  would  transmute  that  evil  also. 
Whether  a  given  evil  can  be  understood  "  is  a  question 
(to  borrow  McTaggart's  language)  which  can  never  be 
answered  permanently  in  the  negative  while  there  is 
still  a  future  before  us."  If  this  attitude  is  in  any 
degree  justified,  the  whole  groundwork  of  McTaggart's 
argument  is  undone ;  built  as  it  is  upon  the  dogma  that 
pain  is  incurably  the  last  word  of  pain. 

Now  it  can  hardly  be  denied  that  the  attitude  in 
question  is  in  some  degree  justified.  For  it  does  not 
occur  to  us  that  pain  is  not  the  last  word  of  pain,  apart 
from  experiences  in  which  we  actually  discover  pain 


220  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

changing  its  character.  Do  we  not  find  simple  past- 
ness  or  remembrance  changing  the  quality  of  ill  for  the 
better?  do  we  not  find  excitement  doing  it,  love  doing 
it,  wrath  doing  it?  Early  man  probably  knew  these 
strange  transmuting  experiences  better  than  we  do.  He 
knew  how  wounds  in  battle  are  scarcely  felt.  He  knew 
how  rage  could  carry  him  gladly  into  certain  injury. 
He  knew  how  pride  could  stop  the  sting  of  very  torture. 
And  he  knew  how  the  frenzy  of  religious  ecstasy  made 
mutilation  not  only  endurable,  but  even  necessary, 
to  give  grist  to  the  great  exhilaration  that  stormed 
within  him.  James  notes  "the  remarkable  fact  that 
sufferings  and  hardships  do  not  as  a  rule  abate  the  love 
of  life ;  they  seem  on  the  contrary  to  give  it  a  keener 
zest."  Inhabitants  of  Greenland  and  Labrador  do  not 
leave  their  difficult  countries,  though  they  might ;  and 
seamen  return  to  the  hardships  of  the  sea  with  an 
unbreakable  attachment  which  is  no  mere  habit.  There 
exists  then  even  widespread  in  human  experience  a  justi- 
fication for  the  assumption  that  pain  has  in  some  degree 
a  further  account  to  meet ;  and  if  in  some  degree,  then 
possibly  in  all  degrees.  That  complete  openness  to 
experience,  necessary  for  happiness,  cannot  be  shown 
impossible. 

IV 

Consider,  now,  by  what  means  this  occasional  trans- 
mutation of  evil  could  become  a  certain  command  of  all 
possible  evil  —  whereby  an  openness  to  all  experience 
might  be  possible.  "  All  possible  evil "  is  a  large,  unde- 
fined, even  growing  and  rapidly  metamorphosing  object. 
What  we  should  much  like  to  find  is  a  power  which  is, 


THE  NEED  OF  A  GOD  221 

not  simply  as  a  fact  but  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  neces- 
sarily efficacious  in  this  work  of  pain-transmuting,  which 
anticipates  the  nature  of  possible  obstacles  without 
knowing  them  in  detail.  Where  can  such  a  principle 
be  looked  for? 

If  a  given  power  stays  in  the  same  field  with  other 
powers  and  competes  with  them,  its  chances  of  subor- 
dinating them  are  precarious;  its  supremacy  at  any  time 
is  a  simple  matter  of  fact,  which  may  give  place  to  another 
matter  of  fact.  But  one  power  can  obtain  certain 
supremacy  in  a  field  of  power  if  it  can  in  some  way 
get  outside  that  field  and  survey  it  from  above.  Thus 
man,  as  a  physical  force  among  forces  animal  and  nat- 
ural, has  little  chance  with  them;  but  as  intelligence 
he  has  some  possibility  of  coping  with  the  best  that 
nature  can  bring  against  him.  There  is  competition  also 
among  intelligences,  among  ideas ;  is  there  any  possible 
supreme  power  here?  No  intelligence  can  be  sure  of 
success  so  long  as  it  remains  in  the  existing  field,  striving 
simply  for  a  more  effective  arrangement  of  old  ideas; 
but  if  it  is  able  to  reflect  upon  the  whole  idea-situation, 
and  from  that  reflection  derive  a  new  idea,  all  other 
intelligences  must  become  its  dependents.  It  is  the 
same  with  competing  passions.  Anger  pitted  against 
anger  can  never  be  sure  of  conquest:  but  a  "soft  an- 
swer" enters  the  situation  as  a  new  idea.  If  it  conquers, 
it  is  because,  refusing  to  compete,  it  includes  and  itself 
stands  outside  the  arena.  Without  further  illustration, 
may  I  suggest  the  principle  that  the  supreme  power  in 
every  case  is  a  non-competing  power,  one  which  may 
seem  at  first  glance  even  irrelevant  to  the  point  at 
issue.  Not  otherwise  will  it  be  with  any  principle  which 


222  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

can  give  us  assured  mastery  of  those  obstacles  collect- 
ively named  "evil." 

In  the  cases  above  mentioned,  in  which  we  can  see  a 
transmuting  principle  at  work,  let  me  call  to  mind  the 
prominence  of  association.  That  pain  which  is  taken 
in  common,  like  effort  which  is  carried  on  in  common,  is 
found  through  the  association  to  lose  its  harshness.1 
One  does  not  quite  see  why  misery  loves  company,  per- 
haps; but  no  doubt  the  fact  of  association  does  some- 
thing to  change  the  color  of  the  experience.  There  is 
only  one  situation  in  savage  life  when  pain  seems  wholly 
unendurable:  namely,  when  vanquished,  dishonored,  and 
abandoned,  the  wretch  must  gasp  out  his  life  in  utter  sol- 
itude. Hardship  gives  zest,  but  under  what  conditions 
in  particular?  Chiefly,  under  conditions  of  significant 
association.  The  general  condition  for  the  transmut- 
ing of  hardship  seems  to  be  this :  that  the  sense  of  union 
with  something  not-myself,  which  I  judge  worthy  of 
this  very  hardship,  and  which  somehow  demands  it  for 
adequate  expression,  shall  be  dense  and  compacted  in  the 
moments  of  suffering.  This  is  naturally  the  case  in  the 
moments  of  war  and  excitement,  and  it  must  have  gone 
far  to  make  history  less  painful  than  the  reading  of  its 
literal  pages  in  cold  blood  makes  manifest.  The  laws 
of  the  multiplication  of  human  power  by  association 
have  never  been  worked  out;  but  no  one  has  failed  to 
measure  in  frequent  experiences  what  incredible  enhance- 
ment of  the  value  of  any  experience  may  occur  in  a 
single  touch  of  endorsement  from  without.  Worth  of  all 
sorts  begins  to  acquire  another  dimension  as  it  enters  a 

1  Even  remembrance  is  a  kind  of  social  relation  between  my  present 
and  my  former  self. 


THE   NEED  OF  A  GOD  223 

career  of  actual  universality,  such  as  the  merest  nod  of 
assent  from  an  Other  may  convey.  Association  is  a  prin- 
ciple which  stands  outside  of  and  includes  whatever  may 
become  content  of  individual  experience ;  there  is  some 
possibility  that  in  association  a  sufficient  mastery  of  evil 
may  be  found. 

But  unfortunately,  association  has  its  own  evils. 
Human  companionship  can,  in  the  way  we  have  noted,  do 
much  to  transmute  every  other  kind  of  pain  into  some- 
thing else;  it  cannot  transmute  its  own  kind  of  pain, 
that  which  comes  from  its  own  defects.  As  imperfect 
i  fenowers  of  themselves  and  of  each  other,  fellow-men  are 
|  the  source  of  the  severest  evils  we  men  have  to  endure ; 
and  by  virtue  of  our  precarious  hold  on  human  existence 
the  closest  association  may  cause  the  bitterest  pang, 
because  its  loss  removes  also  that  by  which  any  loss  is 
made  less  grievous.  Far,  indeed,  must  we  be  from  per- 
fect openness  to  experience  if  there  is  not  some  power 
over  these  evils  also. 


From  what  we  have  judged  of  supreme  power,  it 
would  follow  that  only  something  outside  the  field  of 
human  association,  not  competing  there,  could  afford 
sufficient  armoring  against  these  greatest  evils.  It 
must  be  another  than  any  finite  self,  something  which 
reflects  upon  and  in  its  reflection  includes  all  finite 
selves  and  their  circumstances,  something,  nevertheless, 
with  which  any  finite  self  may  become  associated  in 
some  infallible  manner.  This  seems  to  me  the  point 
in  which  a  God  becomes  necessary.  In  God  we  have 
the  notion  of  an  Other-than-all-men,  and  an  Other 


224  THE  NEED   OF  GOD 

whose  relation  to  me  is  not  subject  to  evil  through  its 
own  defect;  one  from  whom  therefore  I  can  anticipate 
no  pain  that  must  refer  me  to  still  another  for  its  trans- 
muting. It  is  not  the  power  of  God,  as  mighty  in 
comparison  with  other  forces  in  their  own  fields,  that 
is  of  value  to  us ;  it  is  not  God  as  miracle-worker, 
tumbling  Nature-masses  about  through  Herculean  or 
Jovian  command  of  energy ;  it  is  not  even  God  as  vin- 
dicator, doer  of  particular  justice,  meeting  and  over- 
coming the  inequities  of  men's  judgments  by  a  more 
penetrating  judgment;  it  is  rather  God  as  intimate, 
infallible  associate,  present  in  all  experience  as  That 
by  Which  I  too  may  firmly  conceive  that  experience 
from  the  outside.  It  is  God  in  this  personal  relation 
(not  exclusive  of  the  others)  that  alone  is  capable  of 
establishing  human  peace  of  mind,  and  thereby  human 
happiness.  Something  paradoxical  about  the  Supreme 
Power  there  is  ;  something  in  this  non-competitive  char- 
acter which  thinkers  early  seized  upon:  —  as  Lao  Tze 
glorifies  the  Tao  that  never  asserts  itself,  as  Christianity 
presents  for  adoration  its  God  in  the  guise  of  an  in- 
fant, and  infant  of  the  humblest.  The  authentic  voice 
of  God,  if  it  is  to  come  to  man  with  a  wholly  irresist- 
ible might  of  meaning,  must  be  a  still,  small  voice. 

It  is  scarcely  open  to  question  that  the  deepest  asser- 
tion of  the  religious  consciousness  is  of  its  experience 
of  precisely  such  relation  to  its  supreme  Other.  Just 
such  companionship  we  seemed  to  see  the  human  will 
spontaneously  creating  for  itself,  in  its  early  resentful 
outcry  against  destiny;  to  find  later,  perhaps,  that 
here  was  rather  a  discovery  than  a  creation,  strangely 
relieving  the  pressure  of  its  initial  burden.  Just  such 


THE  NEED   OF  A  GOD  225 

companionship  we  find  the  developed  religious  con- 
sciousness celebrating  as  the  source  of  its  "  victory 
over  the  world."  Further  than  this  it  is  not  my  func- 
tion here  to  demonstrate  the  validity  of  these  alleged 
experiences.  The  problem  of  God's  reality,  in  its 
metaphysical  setting,  will  occupy  us  in  the  pages  imme- 
diately following.  We  have  shown  that  such  God  as 
theism  presents  to  men  is  necessary  to  their  happiness, 
and  we  have  shown  that  such  a  God  must  be  found  in 
experience,  if  at  all. 

It  will  not  be  amiss  to  emphasize  in  conclusion  the 
entire  justice  of  McTaggart's  contention  that  the  finite 
God  is  of  no  worth.  When  we  talk  of  experience  of 
God  and  companionship  with  God,  we  run  a  danger 
hardly  less  seductive  than  the  danger  from  atheism. 
Indeed,  atheism  may  be  said  to  live  on  the  perils  and 
failures  of  theism.  The  experience  and  companionship 
of  God  are  not  a  substitute  for  relations  with  humanity, 
The  guidance  and  encouragement  of  God,  devotion 

O  O  ' 

and  love  toward  him,  are  false  when  they  appear  as 
competitors  in  the  field  of  human  alliances.  If  we 
have  been  near  the  truth  in  our  description  of  the 
immediate  work  of  God,  it  can  only  be  to  render  the 
individual  more  perfectly  open  to  experience,  human 
and  other.  If  the  experience  of  God  does  not,  on  the 
whole,  enhance  the  attachments  of  human  life,  one 
must  judge  on  these  principles  that  the  experience  is 
not  of  God.  What  these  terms  of  human  association 
can  mean  when  applied  to  God  is  the  most  difficult  of 
practical  as  well  as  of  theoretical  problems ;  tending,  pre- 
sumably, to  a  mystical  interpretation  of  worship.  The 


226  THE  NEED  OF  GOD 

personality  of  God  must  be,  we  think,  personality  whose 
bonds  are  broken  in  "  passing  through  infinity "  ;  deny- 
ing this  infinity,  McTaggart  finds  rightly  that  he  must 
reject  the  rest  as  comparatively  useless ;  finds  that  his 
finite  God  becomes  an  intruder,  and  an  obstacle  to  the 
loyalties  of  the  spirit.  The  balance  between  the  denial 
of  God  and  the  right  perception  of  God  is  most  deli- 
cate, and  difficult  to  maintain.  We  shall  not  find  it 
until  we  have  realized  what  Kant  meant  by  the  "  regu- 
lative idea."  But  the  positive  appreciation  of  what  God 
means  to  men  is  the  first  step  toward  finding  that  bal- 
ance ;  and  further,  "  all  things  good  are  as  difficult  as 
they  are  rare." 


PART  IV 
HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE   ORIGINAL   SOURCES  OF   THE   KNOWLEDGE 
OF  GOD 

GOD  is  to  be  known  in  experience  if  at  all :  to  this 
result  both  of  the  preceding  parts  of  our  study 
have  led.  And  now  we  have  to  interrogate  experience, 
in  the  hope  of  a  categorical  answer  whether  the  reality 
which  here  we  encounter  in  experience  is  in  any  literal 
sense  a  living  and  divine  reality,  directly  knowable  as 
such. 

The  habit  of  receiving  our  ideas  about  God  through 
tradition  is  likely  to  grow  at  the  expense  of  any  original 
sources  of  this  knowledge  which  we  may  possess.  We 
more  readily  believe  that  "  God  spake  in  times  past  unto 
the  fathers  by  the  prophets "  than  that  we  have  any 
natural  human  organ  for  recognizing  that  presence. 
But  it  must  be  a  postulate  of  our  own  study  that  in 
whatever  way  God  has  been  known  and  heard  by  any 
of  the  prophets,  or  by  seers  of  more  ancient  date,  or  by 
the  first  remote  God-discerning  mind  in  this  planet's 
unrecorded  history,  in  fundamentally  that  same  manner 
is  God  known  by  all  God-knowing  men  at  all  times. 
The  habit  of  looking  backward  to  older  origins,  for 
revelation  authoritatively  transmitted,  is  just  and  right : 
because  the  knowledge  of  God  is  capable  of  develop- 
ment, and  no  man  could  wish  to  begin  again  at  zero. 
But  that  by  which  he  is  able  to  recognize  and  accept 


230  HOW   MEN  KNOW  GOD 

his  authorities  is  his  own  knowledge  of  God,  especially 
that  more  elementary  sense  of  his  that  a  God  exists,  and 
has  left  his  word  in  the  world.  It  is  of  this  universal 
and  primordial  knowledge  that  we  wish  to  take  posses- 
sion ;  far  simpler  and  less  wealthy  than  the  contents  of 
"  revelation,"  but  for  that  reason  the  more  apt  to  be 
neglected,  and  thereby  the  means  lost  by  which  alone 
revelation  and  tradition  can  be  either  appreciated  or 
criticised.  We  shall  be  satisfied  at  present  if  we  can 
find  and  verify  those  original  sources  of  the  knowledge 
of  God  which  we  have  in  common  with  all  men  at  all 
times,  the  universal  revelation.  And  it  is  fair  to  sur- 
mise that  these  original  sources,  advanced  in  God-knowl- 
edge as  we  may  be,  remain  sources  of  new  knowledge 
also,  inexhaustible,  neglected  at  peril. 

To  judge  from  the  history  of  religions,  God  has  been 
known  for  the  most  part  in  connection  with  other 
objects ;  not  so  much  separately,  if  ever  separately,  as  in 
relation  to  things  and  events  which  have  served  as  media 
or  as  mediators  for  the  divine  presence.  We  find  the 
early  knowers  of  God  worshipping  him  under  the  guise 
of  sun,  moon,  and  stars ;  of  earth  and  heaven  ;  of  spirits 
and  ancestors ;  of  totems,  of  heroes,  of  priest-kings ;  and 
of  the  prophets  themselves.  Speaking  broadly,  there 
are  two  distinct  phases  of  experience  wherein  God  is 
apt  to  appear :  in  the  experience  of  Nature  and  in  social 
experience.  Not  everywhere  in  Nature,  but  at  special 
points,  well-known  and  numerous  enough,  the  aware- 
ness of  God  seems,  as  it  were,  to  have  broken  through, 
or  to  have  supervened  upon  our  ordinary  physical 
experience  of  those  objects.  When  man  has  acquired  so 
much  imagination  that  he  is  capable  of  being  stirred 


THE  ORIGINAL  SOURCES  231 

by  Nature,  he  seems  capable  at  the  same  time  of  some- 
thing' more  than  imaginative  stirring — namely,  of 
superstition,  of  religion.  If  that  element  of  the  man 
is  present  which  we  call  the  sense  of  mystery,  then  the 
apparitions  of  heaven  begin  to  work  upon  it,  and  to 
co-operate  with  it ;  the  infinitudes  of  space  and  time 
are  teeming  with  presentiment  and  omen ;  and  man's 
nature-world  is  on  its  way  to  be  judged  divine. 

So  of  social  experience  :  it  is  not  everywhere,  but  at 
special  junctures  and  crises,  that  the  awareness  of  God 
has  come  to  men  ;  at  the  events  of  death  and  birth,  of 
war  and  wedlock,  of  dream  and  disease  and  apparition. 
Given  the  imagination,  the  sense  of  mystery,  and  withal 
so  much  self-consciousness  as  is  required  to  make  the 
idea  of  soul,  or  double,  or  shadowy  spiritual  counter- 
part; and  these  crises  of  social  experience  become  clothed 
with  a  significance  not  limited  to  this  visible  context : 
the  unseen  world  becomes  peopled  with  spirits,  and  in 
time,  with  gods.  Spirit-worship  and  ancestor-worship 
develop  side  by  side  with  the  greater  and  lesser  nature- 
worship,  as  if  here  also  man  had  found  access  to  a 
knowledge  of  God. 

But  although  we  have  here  two  different  regions  of 
religious  suggestion,  destined  to  great  historic  careers 
in  relative  independence,  it  is  evident  that  in  looking 
for  original  sources  we  cannot  keep  them  apart  nor 
assign  to  either  a  priority  over  the  other.  For  the  reli- 
gious experience  of  Nature  means  nothing  if  not  finding 
Nature  living,  even  personal,  thereby  socializing  that 
experience.  Whereas  the  religious  meaning  of  social 
experience  arises  in  the  first  place  only  as  birth,  death, 
and  the  like  are  regarded  as  the  work  of  that  same 


232  HOW   MEN   KNOW  GOB 

inexorable  power  displayed  in  Nature ;  and  survival 
theories  become  religious  only  in  so  far  as  the  surviving 
spirit  becomes  a  power  in  Nature.  What  is  the  Fung 
Shui  of  Chinese  family  religion  but  the  collective  ances- 
tral Force,  bearing  on  family  fortune  through  the  nature- 
powers  of  wind  and  rain  —  in  effect  a  family  Yang 
and  Yin,  even  Tien  and  Tao.  What  would  the  Hindu 
Sraddha  be  without  its  nature  myth  ?  In  all  early  reli- 
gions the  dead  are  thought  to  pass  into  Nature,  and 
in  that  passage  to  change  their  character,  taking  on  the 
menacing  aspect  of  nature-powers,  requiring  therefore 
to  be  propitiated  no  matter  how  nearly  allied  in  life. 
Further  the  unity  that  belongs  in  kind  to  the  religious 
objects,  and  must  become  theirs  in  form  also,  is  chiefly 
conferred  upon  them  by  the  god  of  Nature.  Spirits 
are  essentially  pluralistic  and  swarming:  at  death,  losing 
much  in  individuality,  souls  were  thought  to  mix  with 
nature  and  the  winds  in  floating  multitudes,  or  to  hud- 
dle in  dismal  nether-world  societies,  without  hierarchy 
of  form  or  purpose.  But  heaven  and  earth  and  sun 
have  a  natural  universality  and  unity  ;  are  fitted  to  give 
shape  and  character  to  the  plastic  spirit-mass;  and  at 
last  to  lift  that  mass  into  their  own  singleness  of  order 
and  power.1  Social  experience,  then,  becomes  religious 
/  experience  only  when  it  is  at  the  same  time  an  experi- 
ence of  Nature  power.  And  nature  experience  like- 

1  Thus  the  conquest  of  Egypt  under  the  banner  of  Horus,  god  of  the 
rising  sun,  prepared  the  way  for  such  monotheism  as  Egypt  approached, 
and  even  for  a  moment  attained.  The  focussing  and  defining  influence 
of  nature  in  the  religions  of  Persia,  Greece,  India  needs  hardly  be  pointed 
out.  In  the  Hebrew  religion,  indeed,  the  progress  to  monotheism  was 
of  another  sort  ;  but  in  this  religion  the  imaginative  elements  are  little  in 
evidence,  whether  on  the  side  of  nature  or  of  social  experience. 


THE   ORIGINAL  SOURCES  233 

wise  is  religious  only  when  Nature  becomes  an  object 
of  social  apprehension.  Spiritism  and  Animism  are  at 
bottom  the  same. 

Such  experience  of  Nature  as  arouses  a  fear  with 
supersensible  reverberations,  suggestions  of  unseen  pres- 
ences ; 1  such  social  experience  of  human  crises  as 
arouses  an  awe,  likewise  reaching  into  the  supersensible, 
an  awe  having  close  kinship  with  that  Nature-fear:  it  is 
such  experience  as  this  (not  wholly  unknown  to  any  age 
or  to  any  man)  that  is  called  religious,  and  that  brings 
us  close  to  the  original  source  of  religious  knowledge. 
But  it  is  clear  to  us  that  this  experience  is  not  the 
original  source  itself.  In  these  distinctive  religious 
feelings  of  fear  and  awe  we  have  already  recognized  the 
operation  of  idea-masses  prepared  beforehand  in  some 
more  elemental  experience ;  some  vast  and  intangible 
idea-mass  probably,  which  man  tries  to  give  shape  to,  but 
most  miserably  fails  to  express,  in  his  language  about  the 
"  spirits."  As  small  sounds  in  the  night  convey  mighty 
meanings,  and  feelings  therewith,  to  minds  well-stocked 
with  images  of  the  weird  and  sinister;  so  if  the  phe- 
nomena of  experience,  trifling  as  well  as  majestic,  call 
forth  startled  reactions,  it  is  because  man  has  already 
begun  to  consider  and  judge  the  Whole.  Neither  men 
nor  children  are  able  to  fear  the  dark  until  they  have 
made  much  progress  in  intelligence  and  imagination. 
In  that  "  sense  of  mystery,"  which  we  thought  must 
first  be  present,  we  may  see  the  idea  of  God  already  at 

1  For  a  most  skilful  differentiation  of  this  peculiar  fear  from  other 
types  of  fear,  see  F.  B.  Jevons,  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion, 
ch.  viii. 


234  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

work.  The  original  source  is  here,  if  we  can  discern  it. 
God  has  come  upon  man's  world-scene  in  quiet ;  and 
man's  terror  results  when  in  some  use  of  his  whole-idea 
he  suddenly  notes  God  standing  there.  Through  no 
historical  re-tracings  shall  we  discover  the  silent  entrance 
into  Nature  of  that  presence.  But  what  external  evi- 
dence may  refuse,  some  analysis  may  yet  afford  us  a 
glimpse  of. 

In  all  experience  of  the  type  considered,  we  have 
found  man  vividly  conscious  of  his  own  limitations. 
And  all  man's  limitations,  whether  of  knowledge  or  of 
power  or  of  worth,  are  brought  home  to  him  by  his  con- 
tact with  Nature  in  some  form  or  other.  Nature  con- 
centrates within  itself  all  that  is  menacing  and  hostile 
to  man  ;  and  also  all  that  reminds  him  of  his  pettiness 
and  weakness.  Primary  religious  experience  is  so  bur- 
dened with  this  consciousness  of  limitation  that  we  may 
almost  say :  What  man  fears,  that  he  worships. 

But  we  may  notice  that  what  he  both  fears  and  wor- 
ships is  always  something  more  than  the  World  which 
limits  him.  His  religion  has  added  to  the  natural  ter- 
rors of  existence  new  terrors  of  its  own.  Whatever  his 
fundamental  religious  experience  is,  it  has  brought  him 
little  consolation.  He  goes  about  in  a  subjection  to  his 
world  which  he  had  not  before  known ;  a  breach  has 
opened  between  him  and  his  reality,  —  as  if  now  it 
belongs  to  a  stranger,  whereas  before  it  was,  if  brute 
fact,  still  his  fact.  The  redskin,  says  Brinton,  is 
oppressed  by  the  sense  of  something  invisible  at  work 
everywhere  about  him ;  a  sense  which  leaves  him  anx- 
ious, full  of  alarms.  And  further,  every  touch  of  super- 
nature  is  at  the  same  time  in  some  degree  a  sudden 


THE  ORIGINAL  SOURCES  236 

stroke  of  accusing  self-consciousness.  Among  the 
Bechuana  people,  when  it  thunders  they  exclaim,  "I 
have  not  stolen,  I  have  not  stolen ;  who  among  us  has 
devoured  the  goods  of  another?"  In  first  judging  his 
world,  man  seems  to  find  his  world  judging  him  ;  and 
every  experience  of  the  divine  is  a  day  of  judgment, 
a  moment  summoning  to  instant,  summary  review  of 
self  —  which  review  seems  from  the  first  to  have  yielded 
little  of  reassuring  nature. 

Now  the  epitome  of  all  man's  limitations  is  his  igno- 
rance ;  and  it  is  fair  to  presume  that  man's  speculative 
troubles  are  the  secret  of  all  these  more  practical  troubles. 
For  the  idea  is  (biologically)  the  scout  of  experience, 
and  doubtless  a  knowledge  of  dependence  has  touched 
the  soul  in  advance  of  any  full  appreciation  of  what 
that  dependence  implies.  The  knowledge  of  ignorance 
may  well  be  the  first  warning  note,  sending  its  premoni- 
tory shudder  through  the  frame  of  human  values.  The 
sense  of  a  limitation  of  knowledge,  even  in  Paradise, 
might  tempt  man  to  explore  his  boundaries  ;  might  make 
him  desire  "to  be  as  the  gods,  knowing  good  and 
evil."  He  realizes  that  his  knowledge  is  his  great 
weapon  and  defence,  standing  between  him  and  fate ; 
he  soon  chafes  at  the  persistence  of  any  region  of  igno- 
rance ;  early  proceeds  to  fill  any  such  void  of  knowledge 
with  creatures  of  assumed-knowledge  —  even  long  before 
he  sees  definitely  how  his  ignorance  is  to  hurt  him. 
Nothing  could  have  been  better  timed  than  the  appeal 
of  the  serpent  in  the  Garden. 

But  the  knowledge  of  ignorance  is  of  itself  no  reli- 
gious experience.  Religion  is  bound  up  in  the  differ- 
ence between  the  sense  of  ignorance  and  the  sense  of 


236  HOW   MEN  KNOW  GOD 

mystery  :  the  former  means,  "  I  know  not "  ;  the  latter 
means  "  I  know  not ;  but  it  is  known'1  And  I  dare 
say  that  man  first  realizes  his  ignorance  only  in  so  far 
as  he  becomes  conscious  of  mystery ;  the  negative  side 
of  his  experience  is  made  possible  by  some  prior  recog- 
nition of  a  positive  being,  on  the  other  side  of  his 
limitation. 

It  seems  to  me  then,  that  the  original  source  of 
the  knowledge  of  God  is  an  experience  which  might 
be  described  as  an  experience  of  not  being  alone 
in  knowing  the  world,  and  especially  the  world  of 
Nature.  In  such  an  experience,  if  there  be  such,  would 
be  contained  all  the  possibilities  for  harm  and  for  good 
which  religion  has  exhibited. 

So  long  as  the  unknown  of  the  world  is  simple  mys- 
tery, a  mere  "  It  is  known,"  man  is  made  more  a 
servant  than  before  by  his  religious  experience.  His 
worship  will  take  on  depressing  and  violent  aspects; 
his  consciousness  will  become  a  perpetual  celebration 
of  his  own  inferiority.  He  will  become  a  devotee  of 
the  fearful  and  the  immense,  which  have  always  for 
their  own  sake  an  inherent  fascination  for  man  ;  a  fas- 
cination which  we  understand  when  we  consider  how 
the  operation  of  any  whole-idea  is  a  creation  of  value. 
It  is  psychologically  impossible  for  man  to  face  the 
infinite  in  any  shape  without  exultation.  Any  posi- 
tive view  of  the  universe  beyond  my  ignorance  has 
power  to  excite  infinite  devotion  ;  not  failing  to  tempt 
the  spirit  to  an  infinite  disloyalty  to  itself.  Hence  in 
all  ages  of  the  world,  the  mere  sense  of  mystery,  as  the 
discerning  of  something  beyond  the  bounds  of  ignorance, 


THE  ORIGINAL  SOURCES  237 

has  claimed  its  victims  ;  there  are  always  those  who 
are  capable  of  throwing  themselves  beneath  the  wheels 
of  a  cosmic  Juggernaut,  finding  in  pure  abandonment 
to  the  infinite  if  not  a  cure  for  human  trouble,  at 
least  an  anaesthesia  for  all  ills.  And  indeed,  no  man 
has  found  his  religion  until  he  has  found  that  for 
which  he  must  sell  his  goods  and  his  life;  the  enthu- 
siasm for  martyrdom,  for  radical  self -sacrifice,  is  the 
work  of  the  idea  in  all  of  us :  and  a  universe  of  mys- 
tery, though  it  can  afford  no  more,  can  at  least  afford 
opportunity  for  this. 

But  if  that  original  experience  of  the  presence  of 
God  in  the  world  can  reach  to  some  permanent  hold  on 
its  object,  so  that  it  might  be  expressed,  "  /  know  not ; 
but  He  knows,91  the  entire  aspect  of  religion  is  altered. 
The  reconciliation  of  men  with  such  a  world  is  no 
longer  degrading  nor  disloyal;  for  the  breach  which  is 
opened  up  between  man  and  his  world  by  the  entrance 
of  the  unseen  Claimant,  may  be  through  that  same 
presence  completely  closed. 

From  the  knowledge  that  "He  knows"  will  be  in- 
ferred the  thesis  that  the  unknown  of  Nature  is 
knowable:  and  the  endless  task  of  science  will  receive 
its  necessary  and  sufficient  warrant  and  encouragement. 
Religion  offers  science  the  power  and  the  stimulus  to 
proceed  ad  infinitum  without  fear  of  ultimate  obstacle. 
That  this  proud  liberty  has  been  no  meaningless  gift, 
the  beginnings  of  science  may  clearly  show.  For  man's 
first  science  is  magic  —  his  first  systematic  assertion 
that  nature  is  subordinate  to  the  spirit;  man's  first 
inductions  are  the  magical  inductions  of  the  Name,  the 
Symbol,  the  Imitation.  By  his  knowledge  of  God  he 


238  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

knows  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  that  will 
prove  wholly  refractory  to  the  work  of  idea-making; 
his  knowledge  of  the  absolute  Knower  is  an  attain- 
ment, though  a  vicarious  attainment,  of  the  end  of 
scientific  effort. 

And  so  with  whatever  other  and  more  concrete 
consciousness  of  limitation  may  be  incident  to  natural 
or  social  experience:  if  that  by  which  one  knows 
his  limit  is  a  positive  knowledge  of  the  Spirit,  then 
it  is  a  success  of  incalculable  importance.  "/  can- 
not, but  He  can"  lifts  man  over  his  first  formidable 
obstacles,  and  sets  him  on  his  feet  as  man,  endowed  as 
a  race  with  infinite  faith  and  with  infinite  patience, 
because  already  tasting  the  cup  of  ultimate  achievement. 
Such  knowledge  of  ignorance,  and  the  fear  of  the  Lord 
therewith,  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom  ;  such  knowledge 
of  impotence,  the  beginning  of  concrete  mastery;  such 
knowledge  of  unholiness  is  already  a  touch  of  the 
untouchable  and  a  beginning  of  holiness. 

Religion  is  often  described  as  the  healing  of  an 
alienation  which  has  opened  between  man  and  his 
world:  this  is  true;  but  we  may  not  forget  that  it 
is  religion  which  has  brought  about  that  alienation. 
Religion  is  the  healing  of  a  breach  which  religion 
itself  has  made:  and  if  we  would  reach  the  original 
sources,  we  must  find  them  in  man's  awareness  of  an 
Other  than  himself,  an  Other  who  may  be  a  companion, 
but  also  an  enemy  more  deadly  than  death,  more  dread- 
ful than  Nature  in  herself  has  any  image  of.  It  is 
religion  that  reveals  to  man  the  disparity  between  him- 
self and  his  world,  sets  him  at  odds  with  that  from 


THE  ORIGINAL  SOURCES  239 

which  he  came,  brings  him  to  that  pass  to  which  the 
animal  cannot  come  —  an  unwillingness  to  take  his 
world  as  he  finds  it,  a  consciousness  of  the  everlasting 
No,  and  a  defiance  of  it  or  perhaps  a  subservience  to  it, 
— as  if  this  were  his  god.  And  what  man  has  to  learn 
by  difficult  degrees  is,  that  it  is  his  original  knowledge 
of  God  that  has  made  this  alienation  possible.  "  Thou 
couldst  not  seek  me  (nor  fear  me,  nor  be  resentful 
toward  me)  hadst  thou  not  already  found  me  " :  this 
is  what  religion  always  knows,  yet  has  forever  to  re- 
learn.1 

This  primordial  knowledge  of  God  has  never  been 
wholly  obscured  ;  some  sign  of  that  known  compan- 
ionship has  never  been  absent  from  religion.  Man 
records  this  consciousness  not  only  in  tradition,  but 
also  in  act  and  token ;  he  sets  up  his  holy  places  and 
their  strange  appurtenances  as  memorials  that  the  Spirit 
has  here  been  met  on  friendly  footing,  and  may  prob- 
ably be  met  again.  He  carries  with  him,  inseparable 
from  his  person,  his  fetich,  material  medium  for  his 
spiritual  attendant  and  confidante,  loss  of  which  may  be 
loss  of  all  that  makes  life  worth  living. 

At  the  source  of  all  religion,  so  far  as  our  analysis 
can  discover,  we  find  an  experience  of  God  as  an  Other 
Knower  of  our  World,  already  in  close  relation  to  self, 

1  It  is  reserved  for  fully  developed  religion  to  read  truly  the  para- 
doxical history  of  man's  religious  experience,  both  in  the  race  and  in  the 
individual.  Are  not  these  lines  of  George  Herbert  true  of  these  early 
racial  gropings  also  ? 

Lord,  Thou  didst  make  me,  yet  Thou  woundest  me  ; 
Lord,  Thou  dost  wound  me,  yet  Thou  dost  relieve  me  ; 
Lord,  Thou  relievest,  yet  I  die  by  Thee  ; 
Lord,  Thou  dost  kill  me,  yet  Thou  dost  reprieve  me. 
I  cannot  skill  of  these  Thy  wayes. 


240  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

and  also  in  some  natural  bond  with  our  social  and  phys- 
ical experience.  Such  is  the  report  of  the  elementary 
religious  consciousness;  it  is  this  report  that  we  have 
now  to  pass  judgment  upon. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  MINDS  THAN   OUR 

OWN 

OUR  enquiry  into  the  knowledge  of  God  has  led  to 
this  as  the  central  issue :  whether  in  the  midst  of 
experiences  of  Nature  and  of  human  extremity,  using 
these  in  some  way  as  mediators,  there  can  be  a  veritable 
experience  of  infinite  Spirit  other  than  myself.  We  do 
not  mitigate  the  difficulty  of  this  question  by  pointing 
out  that  the  knowledge  of  any  other  minds  than  our 
own,  even  in  plain  human  intercourse,  has  its  difficulties 
also.  But  in  so  far  as  the  difficulties  are  similar,  it  will 
be  an  advantage  to  bring  them  together, — the  more  so 
since,  in  spite  of  any  difficulties  of  theory,  we  believe 
our  experiences  of  our  fellow's  minds  to  be  real, — 
neither  illusory  nor  simply  working-hypotheses. 

All  the  (substantive)  objects  of  human  attention  and 
experience  may  be  put  into  three  fundamental  classes : 
the  physical  objects,  which  with  their  relations  we  sum 
up  as  Nature ;  the  psychical  objects,  which  with  their 
relations  we  sum  up  as  Self ;  and  the  social  objects,  or 
other  minds,  which  with  their  relations  we  sum  up  as 
Society,  or  still  more  comprehensively,  as  our  Spiritual 
World,  ourselves  being  included.  These  classes  of 
objects  seem  clearly  distinguishable;  not  mixing  nor 
blending  at  their  borders  —  when  I  mean  another  mind 


242  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

I  distinctly  do  not  mean  either  my  own  mind  or  a  phys- 
ical thing.  Each  has  its  own  science  —  physics,  etc., 
psychology,  sociology.  And  each  has  its  own  organ  of 
perception. 

But  no.  We  have  an  outer  sense,  says  Locke,  for 
things  of  nature ;  we  have  an  inner  sense  for  things  of 
our  own  minds,  our  thoughts  and  feelings;  but  Locke 
mentions  no  sense  by  which  we  can  discern  another 
mind.  And  neither,  be  it  said,  does  any  later  philos- 
opher. Sociologists  speak  of  "  the  social  sense,"  social 
instincts,  "  consciousness  of  kind,"  and  the  like ;  but 
these  practical  designations  are  not  intended  to  name 
an  actual  organ  of  knowledge  differentiated  for  percep- 
tion of  other  minds.  We  have  no  such  organ.  Soci- 
ology is  an  extended  psychology,  made  possible  by  the 
fact  that  Society,  as  we  noted,  includes  Self,  —  is  built 
up  really  of  psychical  objects,  and  from  the  center  out- 
ward, by  help  of  ideas  which  work  well  in  practice : 
other  theory  than  this  of  social  experience  we  shall  not 
find  in  the  Books.  This  third  class  of  objects  is,  by 
some  strange  device,  made  knowable  without  a  special 
perceptive  organ :  —  or,  perhaps  we  are  mistaken  in 
assuming  it  literally  knowable. 

This  absence  of  a  perceptive  organ  makes  it  probable 
that  we  are  mistaken  :  it  suggests  that  our  social  knowl- 
edge is  built  on  hypothesis,  and  not  at  all  on  experi- 
ence. It  compels  us  to  examine  our  so-called  social 
experience  directly,  to  see  whether  we  can  find  any  point 
of  actually  present  and  certain  knowledge  of  another 
mind.  Such  an  examination  yields  little  that  is  satisfy- 
ing. What  I  do  directly  experience  is  the  physical 
presence  of  the  other  person ;  and  his  expressive  signs 


KNOWLEDGE   OF  OTHER  MINDS  243 

and  language,  which  are  also  physical.  From  these  I 
infer  his  reality,  and  nothing  in  experience  tends  to 
shake  that  hypothesis ;  everything  confirms  it.  What  I 
have,  then,  is  a  perfect  hypothesis.  For  all  practical 
purposes,  I  am  as  certain  of  my  social  environment  as  I 
am  of  my  physical  environment :  indeed,  the  reality  of 
this  social  world  of  mine  is  the  last  thing  I  should 
doubt.  The  practical  certainties  here  are  unshakable. 
But  if  you  ask  for  more  than  practical  certainty ;  if  you 
require  a  genuine  social  experience,  in  the  literal  sense 
of  the  word  experience,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  discover  it.  I 
am  inclined  to  think  there  is  no  such  thing. 

And  I  must  acknowledge  that  even  this  sense  of 
practical  certainty  does  sometimes  desert  me.  My  social 
consciousness  is  subject  to  extraordinary  fluctuations; 
my  sense  of  the  presence  of  other  souls  comes  and  goes 
in  an  unaccountable  way;  it  flits  in  its  substantiality 
from  one  extreme  to  the  other,  much  as  does  my  belief 
in  God.  When  I  seek  to  grasp  it,  it  eludes  me. 

There  are  times  when  my  consciousness  is  burden- 
somely  public,  and  not  my  own ;  when  the  social  world 
is  all  too  real  and  immediate ;  when  I  can  find  no 
seclusion  in  my  thoughts,  no  privacy  even  behind 
barred  doors.  At  such  times,  I  can  get  no  hold  on 
myself,  because  of  the  incessant  pressure  of  the  other 
men  in  me,  voices,  postures,  beliefs  that  pursue  me  and 
harry  away  all  risings  of  individuality  on  the  part  of 
my  self.  I  escape  into  the  wilderness,  and  Nature 
becomes  a  chorus  —  there  is  no  shape  which  may  not 
take  on  animation  —  even  the  stones  may  sermonize. 
And  yet  at  other  times,  if  I  deliberately  seek  contact 
with  that  world  of  other  mind,  an  oppressive  solitude 


244  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

cloaks  me  in.  I  bury  myself  in  the  rush  of  men  ;  but 
am  no  better  able  to  bridge  chasms,  or  reach  vitality  of 
give-and-take  with  them.  I  make  designs  against  my 
neighbor,  I  hunt  him  to  his  secret  castle,  I  hold  him  at 
the  point  of  my  sword,  I  seize  him  bodily  — he  vanishes, 
and  I  have  nothing.  I  cannot  make  him  open  himself 
to  me  ;  I  cannot  so  much  as  open  myself  to  him  :  I  am  a 
prisoner,  and  without  ability  to  find  where  I  am  bound. 
I  see  that  the  doctrine  of  monads  is  no  futile  myth. 

Such  is  my  current  social  experience  so-called,  and 
it  seems  clear  to  me  that  if  there  were  any  absolute 
certainty  in  it,  these  variations  would  not  occur.  That 
which  at  times  may  so  escape  me  can  hardly  be  an 
empirically  given  presence. 

Then  I  reflect  that  in  the  nature  of  the  case  it  could 
hardly  be  otherwise :  the  other  mind  must  be  beyond 
my  powers  of  direct  experience.  It  can  be  no  object  of 
sensation,  because  it  is  not  a  physical  thing.  It  must 
be  such  as  I  am,  a  thinker  of  its  objects,  not  an  object 
among  objects ;  and  as  such  thinker,  or  subject,  it  can 
only  be  thought,  not  sensed.  That  which  makes  him 
himself,  and  other-than-me,  is  (by  definition)  the  fact 
that  his  thoughts  are  not  my  thoughts ;  so  long  as  he 
remains  other-than-me,  his  thoughts  can  never  become 
identically  mine,  though  I  may  conjecture  them  and 
approximately  think  them  after  him.  Of  myself,  I 
find,  and  desire,  an  infinite  thought-fund  inaccessible 
to  others,  and  inaccessible  through  all  finite  times  to 
myself ;  it  cannot  be  otherwise  with  him  —  he  has  in 
him  an  infinitude  of  character,  only  gradually  devel- 
oped and  made  general  —  infinitude  at  which  I  may 


KNOWLEDGE   OF  OTHER  MINDS  245 

only  guess.  Souls,  by  their  own  nature,  cannot  touch 
each  other ;  cannot  experience  each  other :  their  rela- 
tions do  not  rise  to  the  point  of  knowledge,  —  they 
remain  excursions,  adventures,  hypotheses,  wonderfully 
sustained  by  their  results,  but  none  the  less,  launches 
from  solitude  in  the  direction  of  an  assumed  reality ; 
which  reality,  if  it  exists,  is  no  less  solitary. 

I  look  down  from  a  cliff  upon  a  beach  below;  the 
black  fleck  wandering  there  excites  in  me  the  con- 
sciousness of  fellow-being:  I  turn  away  with  the 
impression  that  there  has  been  in  my  life  a  social  event, 
an  experience  of  another  mind.  But  I  have  verified 
nothing.  And  if  I  climb  down  and  discover  that 
object  to  be  in  fact  a  human  shape,  what  have  I  now 
verified  ?  A  physical  object,  —  nothing  more.  What 
made  that  glance  from  above  more  than  physically  sig- 
nificant was  clearly  a  contribution  from  within.  In 
Kantian  phrase,  I  had  imposed  this  concept  upon  the 
appearance ;  I  had  begriffen  it  that  way,  and  my  own 
Begriff  gave  me  the  only  sociality  I  experienced,  —  all 
that  in  fact  I  ever  can  experience. 

There  are  more  intimate  relations,  and  less  intimate 
relations  :  more  work,  or  less,  for  my  Begriff-social  to 
do  —  but  what  my  Begriff  is  given  to  work  upon,  as 
actual  stuff  of  experience,  is  the  body.  Body  of  man 
and  Nature  —  nothing  more.  When  that  body  disap- 
pears, even  though  the  other  spirit  persists,  all  that  / 
have  of  him  is  gone.  I  have  no  organ  for  the  experi- 
ence of  other  mind;  by  the  nature  of  other-mind,  I 
could  have  none. 

I  would  press  the  logic  of  this  situation,  if  I  were 
able,  until  we  should  cry  out  that  it  is  a  He,  whether  or 


246  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

not  we  see  how  it  is  false;  and  that  any  philosophy 
which  ends  in  such  a  situation  is  impossible.  Human 
communications  must  be  at  bottom  as  real  as  we  think 
them  to  be  —  no  intricate,  successful,  solitary  panto- 
mime of  each  with  himself  and  Body. 

And  then  I  would  urge  that  we  are  not  quit  of  this 
logic  by  crying  out  against  it ;  and  resolving  for  our 
part  to  treat  our  world  as  if  we  were  in  direct  conscious 
relations  with  our  fellows.  For  that  attitude  of  common- 
sense-resolve  is  precisely  the  subjective,  solipsistic  sort  of 
philosophy  which  we  have  just  denounced.  Logic  here 
is  the  sole  remaining  bond  of  genuine  mutuality  among 
men;  and  if  we  will  not  patiently  earn  our  conscious 
right  to  our  fellows,  we  must  likewise  forgo  our  con- 
scious right  to  God.  We  cannot  dispense  with  either. 

The  problem  of  our  social  consciousness  is  as  old  as 
Berkeley's  idealism  (old  in  fact  as  Leibniz  or  Descartes, 
but  not  felt  before  Berkeley  as  a  primary  demand  on 
thinking) ;  and  since  his  time  thinkers  have  not  been 
allowed  to  forget  it.  It  has  become  a  stock  spectre, 
especially  for  idealistic  theories,  to  show  that  their  logic 
must  end  in  solipsism.  Several  ways  to  escape  the  logic 
of  separate  personality  have  been  devised.  We  shall 
examine  the  most  important  of  them. 

One  may  seek  to  discover  and  formulate  infallible 
criteria  or  signs,  by  which  we  may  certainly  know  that 
we  have  before  us  another  conscious  being.  This  way 
out  has  its  plausibility ;  for  is  it  not  the  sight  of  other 
bodies  and  expressive  movements  like  or  analogous  to 
our  own  which  actually  compels  our  judgment  that 
another  mind  is  here  ?  Or,  if  we  learn  (as  from  Royce 


KNOWLEDGE   OF  OTHER  MINDS  247 

and  Baldwin)  that  we  rather  interpret  our  own  bodies 
by  those  of  others,  than  the  reverse  ;  and  if  we  find  (by 
first  steps  in  comparative  psychology)  that  analogies 
soon  fail  as  we  try  to  test  the  consciousness  of  animals 
and  plants ;  if  we  abandon,  as  we  must,  the  whole  argu- 
ment from  analogy  as  hopeless,  certainly  the  psychology 
of  our  impulsive  social  reactions  will  reveal  some  reliable 
stimuli,  whose  presence  infallibly  indicates  other  mind. 
Are  there  not  as  Wundt  suggests  "manifestations  of 
animal  life  which  cannot  be  explained  without  the  intro- 
duction of  the  mental  factor?"  Unfortunately  there 
are  none  such;  every  physical  change  must  and  may 
be  referred  to  a  physical  cause.  There  is  no  reason 
why  "  educability "  itself  may  not  be  a  property  of 
matter.1  Are  there  not  in  certain  groupings  of  actions 
unmistakable  "  signs  of  choice  " ;  or  as  James  better 
states  it,  can  we  not  recognize  "  the  pursuit  of  ends 
with  the  choice  of  means  ?  "  Certainly  all  such  signs 
as  these  do  guide  our  social  judgments.  Even  more 
than  by  strict  planfulness  ("  pursuit  of  ends  with 
choice  of  means  ")  are  we  guided  by  a  certain  playful- 
ness or  superabundance  in  the  apparent  government  of 
movements :  signs  of  fluidity,  eagerness,  emotionality 
are  more  immediately  compelling  than  signs  of  intelli- 
gent end-seeking.  But  after  all,  these  are  nothing  but 
signs,  physical  signs ;  and  explicit  language  which  rises 
out  of  this  aboriginal  expressiveness  is  but  a  further 
set  of  physical  signs,  which  nowhere  rests  on  a  verit- 
able experience  of  other  mind.  If  somewhere  we  could 
begin  with  an  actual  consciousness  of  the  social  object, 

1  And  herewith  we  exclude  Binet,  Bunge,  Moebius,  etc.,  as  well  as 
Schneider  who  appeals  to  "  irregular  muscular  action." 


248  HOW  MEN  KNOW   GOD 

all  these  criteria  would  help  us  amazingly  to  continue 
and  subdivide  our  intercourse :  it  is  always  easier  to 
determine  what  state  of  mind  belongs  with  what  set  of 
actions  than  to  determine  whether  there  be  any  state  of 
mind  there  or  no.  (Writhings  of  earthworm  on  fish- 
hook express  discomfort,  if  they  express  any  conscious- 
ness at  all,  which  may  be  doubted.)  Even  if  infallible 
criteria  could  be  got  —  which  is  impossible  —  they 
would  still  do  nothing  to  bring  us  nearer  the  other  mind 
itself  :  for  all  such  criteria  are  themselves  physical. 

A  much  more  adequate  way  is  that  proposed  by 
Professor  Royce  ;  his  criteria  are  not  physical,  and  do 
undoubtedly  bring  us  near  to  an  original  experience  of 
the  other  mind.  "  Our  fellows  are  known  to  be  real " 
says  Royce,  "  because  they  are  for  each  of  us  the  end- 
less treasury  of  more  ideas.  .  .  .  (They)  furnish  us  with 
the  constantly  needed  supplement  to  our  own  fragment- 
ary meanings."  1  To  anything  that  appears  in  our  life 
with  the  character  of  a  response,  we  instinctively  attrib- 
ute outer  personality.  Not  thunder  in  general,  but 
thunder  at  a  critical  moment  in  our  thinking,  means 
that  Jove  has  spoken.  If  a  distant  signal  moves  in 
direct  answer  to  our  own  signalings,  we  need  see  no 
human  form  to  infer  the  presence  of  an  outer  conscious- 
ness. What  infallibly  convinces  us  is  the  experience 
that  our  own  thought  is  carried  on  to  further  develop- 
ment (and  without  our  own  equivalent  effort).  The 
more  completely  and  deeply  the  answering  and  supple- 
menting idea  caps  and  enters  into  our  own  train  of 
development,  the  more  inevitable  the  acknowledgment. 
And  so  we  may  build  a  series  all  the  way  from  the 

1  The  World  and  the  Individual,  ii,  168-174. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  MINDS  249 

opportune  clap  of  thunder  to  the  continuous  successful 
intercourse  with  our  fellow  men,  a  series  of  increasing 
conviction  of  the  reality  of  our  social  experience.  When 
we  have  reached  the  stage  of  voluntarily  putting  ques- 
tions to  our  environment,  and  expecting  and  receiv- 
ing conceptual  answers,  our  faith  is  complete.  God  is 
doubtless  most  real  to  that  person  who  finds  his  prayers 
somehow  responded  to;  for,  to  paraphrase  Royce's  cri- 
terion, response  is  our  best  ground  for  believing  the 
social  object  real. 

Upon  this  way  of  reaching  the  Other  Mind,  we  must 
make  the  following  comment.  That  we  are  still  left 
with  only  an  inference  of  that  Other;  a  faith  and  not  a 
knowledge  in  experience.  Even  though  we  say,  with 
Royce,  that  reality  is  nothing  else  than  response  (or  ful- 
filling of  meaning),  we  have  not  so  far  as  this  criterion 
goes,  found  that  reality  personal  save  by  probability  of 
high  order.  We  can  still  speak  only  of  "  the  source 
of  our  belief  in  the  reality  of  our  fellow  men,"  1  not  of 
an  experience  of  that  reality  itself.  The  relative  pas- 
sivity of  our  reception  of  idea  from  without  is  no  invin- 
cible proof  that  it  does  come  from  another  mind :  men 
have  been  known  to  dream  conversations  which  add  to 
their  knowledge ;  thinking  itself  often  takes  conversa- 
tional shape,  ourself  being  recipient ;  in  all  thinking  the 
new  comes  to  one  as  if  from  another.  We  shall  have 
a  difficult  distinction  to  make  between  such  inner 
development  of  our  own  meanings,  and  that  development 
which  we  shall  regard  as  hailing  from  a  veritable  Other 
Mind.  But  no  type  of  inference,  however  direct  and 
simple,  can  quite  meet  our  requirement ;  for  that  which 

1  P.  169  of  work  cited  ;  italics  mine. 


250  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

we  must  first  infer  is  one  step  away  from  immediate 
experience. 

Are  we  not  driven,  then,  to  a  view  which  closely 
resembles  that  first  supposition  of  ours  that  social  expe- 
rience is  a,  practical  certainty  :  that  view  namely  which 
interprets  the  social  experience  as  a  moral  affirmation,  an 
acknowledgment  which  we  ought  to  make,  something  of 
which  no  scientific  or  empirical  knowledge  is  either  pos- 
sible or  conceivable.  As  Professor  Miinsterberg  puts 
it  in  his  powerful  chapter  on  "Die  reine  Erfahrung,"1 
—  we  do  experience  our  fellow  men,  but  even  so  as  we 
immediately  experience  all  reality,  by  acknowledging 
them  real.  I  cannot  doubt  that  the  last  mystery  of 
mutual  contact  is  contained  in  the  will,  rather  than  in 
the  intellect ;  a  thesis  which  we  shall  have  later  to  con- 
sider.2 But  all  will  makes  use  of  knowledge,  prior  or 
simultaneous.  There  is  no  human  will  that  does  not 
contain  a  nucleus  of  knowledge  which  is  not  our  own 
act ;  and  it  is  this  that  we  wish  to  separate  out. 

All  of  these  ways — by  physical  criterion,  by  response, 
and  by  acknowledgment  —  have  a  common  presup- 
position. They  all  suppose  the  mind  to  be  furnished 
in  advance  with  an  idea  of  an  Other  Mind.  We  are 
able  to  read  our  signs  as  we  do,  because  we  already  ex- 
pect them  to  mean  something,  we  have  already  framed 
somehow  the  conception  of  another  mind.  Our  world 
responds  only  in  so  far  as  we  have  our  net  hung  out, 
confident  that  Other  Mind  will  fill  it  with  usable  fur- 
therings  of  our  own  thought:  apart  from  this  Other- 
Mind-meaning  of  ours,  no  event  could  take  on  the 

1  Grundziige  der  Psychologic,  pp.  44-55. 

2  Under  the  general  topic  of  "  Mysticism,"  Part  V. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  OTHER  MINDS  251 

character  of  response.  So  also,  if  we  are  to  will,  or 
postulate,  or  acknowledge,  the  fellow-man,  it  is  to  be 
asked  how,  apart  from  previous  idea,  we  know  what 
to  acknowledge.  The  conception  of  the  fellow-man, 
somehow  obtained,  is  necessary  before  my  duty  of 
acknowledging  him  can  be  performed,  or  understood. 
Beside  which,  there  remains  an  ulterior  question,  — to 
Whom  or  to  What  do  I  owe  this  duty  ?  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  obligation  implies  a  known  Other :  and 
that  while  duty  and  social  experience  are  doubtless  in- 
separable, it  is  duty  that  depends  on  social  experience, 
not  social  experience  on  duty. 

It  is  because  all  of  these  theories  really  accept  the 
doubt  of  an  immediate  experience  of  Other  Mind,  that 
they  must  thus  assume  the  idea  of  Other  Mind  to  be 
there, —  innate  or  unaccounted-for.  It  is  for  this  rea- 
son that  we  cannot  adopt  any  of  them  as  final ;  though 
none  of  them  fails  to  throw  much  important  light  on 
the  actual  working  of  our  social  consciousness. 

The  ultimate  difficulty  in  this  matter  is  due,  as  I  have 
come  to  think,  to  our  over-dogmatic  ideals  of  knowl- 
edge, and  to  the  explanations  we  adopt  of  the  knowing 
process.  We  take  our  knowledge  of  physical  things  as 
the  type  and  ideal  of  all  satisfactory  knowledge,  —  and 
we  find  naturally  enough  that  we  have  no  such  physical 
knowledge  of  fellow  minds.  We  explain  our  knowing 
of  any  object  by  a  relation  between  object  and  subject, 
in  which  the  object  presumably  produces  some  effect  on 
the  subject,  —  and  we  find  naturally  enough  that  any- 
thing which  is  intrinsically  subject  cannot  become  such 
an  object. 


252  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

But  if  such  were  the  true  ideal  and  explanation  of 
knowledge,  we  could  not,  of  course,  know  ourselves 
any  more  than  we  could  know  others.  For  we  can  have 
no  physical  knowledge  of  our  own  mind,  nor  can  our 
own  mind  cease  to  be  subject  in  order  to  become  an 
object.  And  conversely,  by  whatever  understanding  of 
the  matter  we  can  account  for  self-knowledge,  by  that 
same  understanding  we  may  probably  account  for  knowl- 
edge of  other  subjects.1  When  Locke  suggested  his 
inner  sense,  after  the  analogy  of  outer  sense,  he  prob- 
ably used  a  misleading  figure;  intending  doubtless  only 
to  outline  the  fact  of  self-knowledge  as  a  thing  distinct 
from  knowledge  of  physical  sense  :  of  special  organ 
there  seems  to  be  none  for  self-knowledge,  any  more 
than  for  knowledge  of  other  minds.  In  truth,  all 
three  classes  of  objects  of  experience  stand  on  the  same 
precarious  footing:  and  of  these  three  classes,  the  knowl- 
edge of  other  mind  is  the  latest  to  be  declared  impos- 
sible. Each  of  the  other  types  of  knowledge,  knowl- 
edge of  nature  or  of  self,  had  been  shown  impossible, 
by  one  theory  of  knowledge  or  another,  before  social 
knowledge  had  been  drawn  into  technical  question. 
We  have  only  to  adopt  the  proper  axiom,  and  any  group 
of  objects  we  please  becomes  subject  to  skepticism,  thus: 

I.  Knowledge  of  self  is  impossible.  Because  the 
thing  known  is  always  other  than  the  self  that  knows  it. 

1  More  technically  stated  :  we  err  in  assuming  to  explain  knowing 
by  a  dyadic  relation  between  subject  and  object  (say  S  :  O).  This  explan- 
ation bears  its  own  condemnation  on  its  face  ;  for  if  knowing  were  of  the 
form  S  :  O,  S  (in  every  act  of  knowing)  would  remain  unknown,  and  the 
relation  S  :  O  must  be  unknown  likewise.  If  knowledge  is  to  be  explained, 
that  is,  put  in  terms  of  something  else  than  knowledge,  our  dyad  must 
broaden  out,  —  as  I  think  and  shall  try  to  show,  —  into  a  triad. 


KNOWLEDGE   OF  OTHER  MINDS  263 

On  this  axiom  it  might  be  possible  to  know  Nature,  or  to 
know  Other  Selves, —  only  not  the  Self.  The  epistemo- 
logical  subject  is  unknown  (Rickert).  Psychological 
introspection  is  understood  to  reveal,  not  the  self,  but 
quasi-physical  objects ;  we  find  never  the  genuine  self. 

II.  Knowledge   of    physical    objects   is   impossible. 
Because  consciousness  can  contain  nothing  but  experi- 
ence-stuff.    When  I  say  of  any  object  "I  know  it";  I 
have  already  made  it  a  part  of  my  experience :  when  I 
think  of  it,  I  think  of  it  always  as  contained  in  experi- 
ence,—  if  not  my  own,  then  another's.     On  this  axiom,  it 
might  be  possible  to  know  Self,  or  even  Other  Selves, — 
only  not  physical  things  as  independent  substances .     A 
quasi-physical  world  of  orderly  experience  we  of  course 
have ;  we  never  find  the  genuine  physical  world. 

III.  Knowledge  of  social  objects  is  impossible.     This 
is  proved  by  sharpening  either  axiom  above.     We  may 
say  that  the  object  of  knowledge  is  always  other  than 
any  subject.     Or  we  may  say  that  the  object  of  knowl- 
edge is  always  my  object,  belonging  to  my  experience, 
known  as  such,  thought  of  as   such.     In  either  case 
social  experience  is  impossible.     Quasi-social  experience 
one  does  not  question ;  it  is  only  the  genuine  Other  that 
we  fail  to  find. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  three  cases  are  alike. 
We  have  a  trilemma,  each  horn  of  which  is  as  valid  as 
the  rest.  We  could  set  up  another  triad,  if  we  chose, 
beginning  thus :  Self  is  the  one  object  perfectly  know- 
able  ;  Nature  is  the  one  object  perfectly  knowable ;  the 
Other  Mind  is  the  one  object  perfectly  and  ideally  know- 
able.  The  last  of  these  propositions  would  be  as  ten- 
able as  the  first,  and  as  little  tenable. 


264  HOW  MEN   KNOW  GOD 

It  is  not  useless,  I  think,  thus  to  point  out  that  all 
types  of  knowledge  are  liable  to  the  same  type  of  predica- 
ment; and  that  all  such  predicaments  may  be  traced  to 
axioms  expressing  some  ideal  of  knowledge  too  hastily 
assumed  as  exclusive.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  we  can 
know  ourselves  better  than  we  can  know  any  other  thing, 
whether  of  nature  or  of  mind  beyond  ourselves.  There 
is  a  sense  in  which  the  physical  world  is  more  thor- 
oughly knowable  and  satisfactorily  holdable  in  knowl- 
edge than  any  other  type  of  object.  There  is  also  a 
sense  in  which  the  primary  object  of  acquaintance  for 
any  finite  knower  is  his  environment  of  Other  Mind. 

The  alienness  and  inaccessibility  which  we  are  com- 
pelled to  ascertain  from  time  to  time,  not  more  in  the 
Other  Mind  than  in  Nature  or  in  Self,  may  well  be  only 
such  alienness  as  we  must  intend  them  to  have,  meaning 
what  they  do,  if  we  were  to  picture  to  ourselves  their 
most  ideal  knowableness.  May  it  not  be,  for  example, 
that  if  we  should  become  clear  what  kind  of  knowledge 
of  Other  Mind  we  should  desire,  as  the  most  perfect  pos- 
sible knowledge  of  Other  Mind,  this  ideal  knowledge 
would  not  differ  in  principle  from  the  knowledge  which 
we  actually  have.  I  propose  to  try  this  as  the  next  stage 
in  our  search  for  the  actual  social  experience ;  enquiring 
particularly  whether  we  could  desire  to  know  Other  Mind 
apart  from  just  such  physical  mesh  as  has  in  this  present 
chapter  seemed  the  chief  barrier  to  that  knowledge. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
SUCH  KNOWLEDGE  AS   WE  COULD  DESIRE 

WHAT  is  the  object  which  we  desire  to  know? 
An  other  mind  :  but  certainly  in  no  case  an 
empty  mind.  It  is  a  mind  which  has  its  own  objects, 
and  is  at  work  upon  them.  There  is  no  principle  of 
attraction  between  empty  minds,  i.e.,  between  minds, 
pure  and  simple :  there  is  no  gravitation  between  minds 
as  between  bodies. 

Regarded  as  pure  spirits,  minds  are  very  much  alike; 
individuality  begins  to  appear,  and  our  interest  there- 
with, only  in  so  far  as  the  mind  engages  in  struggle 
with  its  experience.  In  truth,  minds  must  be  occupied 
with  matter  in  order  to  be  of  interest  to  one  another ; 
whence  it  may  appear  that  matter  supplies  the  principle 
of  attraction  between  spirits,  as  well  as  between  bodies 
—  the  principle  at  once  of  attraction  and  separation. 
Character  comes  out  chiefly  in  dealing  with  Nature1 
and  what  engages  us  in  any  person  is  an  individual 
quality  which  must  be  described  in  terms  of  his 
encounter  with  physical  conditions,  and  the  encounter  of 
the  race  with  those  same  conditions.  Every  character 
is  some  epitome  of  the  economic  and  artisan  labors  of 
the  race.  Power  over  nature,  clearly  seen  or  dimly 
divined  in  another,  is  what  compels  us  to  him.  This 
power  is  first  seen  in  the  body  itself,  wherein  wayward 

1  See  above,  p.  190. 


256  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

materials  and  energies  are  subdued  under  an  immediate 
capital  command,  prophetical  of  much  further  mastery  j 
and  beauty  of  body  signifies  to  us  an  ease  of  mastery, 
which  finishing  its  task  returns  with  abundance  to  con- 
trol itself.  Apart,  then,  from  a  world  of  things  which 
resists  desire  and  so  forms  the  text  and  context  of  a 
temporal  career,  there  is  nothing  in  mind  personal  and 
distinctive,  exciting  to  knowledge.  These  elementary 
strains  and  stresses  make  up  our  simplest  thought  of 
the  man.  It  is  the  other  mind  as  knowing  and  master- 
ing Nature  that  we  first  care  about. 

The  mind  to  be  known  is,  we  say,  a  concrete  being ; 
worthless  even  to  itself  apart  from  the  material  in 
which  it  operates.  It  is  the  Mind-in-union-with-Nature 
that  we  want  to  know.  But  the  mind  is  still  that 
which  deals  with  this  material;  and  we  concern  our- 
selves with  the  material  only  for  the  sake  of  that  which 
it  manifests.  I  make  boots ;  but  still,  it  is  no  part  of 
my  self  that  I  make  just  boots  —  I  could  have  found 
my  character  as  well  in  making  books  or  laws  or  music. 
Would  it  not  be  possible,  if  knowing  were  ideal,  to 
take  the  burden  of  nature-stuff  for  granted  and  see 
that  character  in  itself,  becoming  conscious  of  its  think- 
ing apart  from  the  irrelevant  stimuli  of  its  thought  ? 

The  notion  of  telepathic  communication  seems  to 
propose  some  such  ideal ;  that  of  reading  thoughts 
without  taking  cognizance  of  sensations.  Since  we  are 
speaking  of  ideals  not  of  facts,  and  telepathy  has 
usually  been  regarded,  whether  by  believers  or  by  non- 
believers,  as  an  ideal  improvement  in  mutual  knowl- 
edge, we  must  look  into  the  meaning  of  its  proposal. 


KNOWLEDGE  WE   DESIRE  257 

Telepathy  would  save,  presumably,  the  trouble  of  expres- 
sion ;  it  would  save  the  detour  of  thought,  by  which 
it  must  journey  down  into  language  and  back  into 
thought  again.  It  would  connect  the  two  termini 
directly,  without  the  complex  series  of  irrelevant  means. 

Examine  this  proposal  of  telepathy.  Consider  our- 
selves in  the  act  of  knowing  the  thought  of  another 
mind  in  the  direct  manner  suggested.  This  must  mean 
one  of  two  things.  Either  we  find  ourselves  imagin- 
ing the  other  person,  and  in  imagination  hearing  him 
speak,  or  seeing  him  make  well-known  signs,  or  other- 
wise reinvesting  himself  in  fancy  with  his  usual  physi- 
cal media  of  communication.  Or  else,  we  find  our  own 
thoughts  moving  under  some  "  strong  impression  "  that 
this  development  hails  from  a  given  absent  person.  In 
either  case,  the  value  of  the  experience  would  lie  in  the 
possibility  of  verifying  it,  by  communicating  with  the 
person  "  face  to  face."  If  such  possibility  of  verifying 
were  cut  off,  we  should  speedily  be  disabused  of  our 
preference  for  this  sort  of  relation  with  our  friends; 
what  more  unsatisfactory  intercourse  could  be  imagined 
than  a  series  of  "  strong  impressions  "  which  had  no 
prior  nor  further  history  ?  Even  to  the  telepathic 
fancy,  the  physical  presence  and  vocal  evidence  of  the 
other's  thought  remains  the  standard  experience,  to 
which  all  other  points  as  its  ideal,  however  useful 
(telephone-wise  or  wireless-wise)  in  exceptional  circum- 
stances. Telepathy,  I  think,  has  little  to  offer  toward 
defining  a  better  way  of  knowing  Other  Mind. 

The  plausibility  of  the  thought-reading  ideal  comes 
in  part  from  the  very  perfection  of  our  ordinary  modes 
of  intercourse ;  through  their  silent  efficiency  the  phys- 


268  HOW   MEN  KNOW  GOD 

ical  bearers  of  our  meaning  drop  out  of  sight,  and  it 
is  to  us  as  if  we  were  dealing  with  meanings  purely, 
without  any  need  of  sights  and  sounds.  Our  social 
experience  is  the  pre-eminently  developable  side  of 
human  experience :  as  we  have  perfected  it,  it  is  of 
peculiar  richness,  elasticity,  and  depth.  It  is  with  some 
effort  of  abstraction  that  we  look  away  from  those 
regions  where,  with  amazing  technique,  the  play  of  our 
passing  thought-exchange  takes  place,  to  the  simple 
physical  groundwork  of  it  all.  We  think  we  might 
dispense  with  that,  only  because  it  serves  us  so 
perfectly. 

There  is  another  reason  for  the  appeal  of  the  pro- 
posal that  thoughts  may  be  known  without  reference 
to  Nature.  It  is  the  assumption  that  men  first  have 
thoughts  and  then  later  express  them.  This  is  less 
than  a  half-truth ;  for  the  expression  of  a  thought  is 
an  integral  part  of  taking  possession  of  that  thought. 
The  one  quickest  way  to  put  stupidity  on  a  par  with 
genius  would  be  to  make  stupidity  owner  of  all  these 
ideas  which  it  has,  but  is  not  yet  able  to  express.  In 
truth,  it  is  no  hardship  that  friends  must  "  descend 
to  meet  "  —  as  Emerson  has  it :  for  such  descent  into 
physical  expression  is  a  progress  into  valid  and  active 
existence. 

An  idea  shares  the  history  of  the  body  ;  it  needs  to 
ripen  and  mature ;  it  must  find  its  way  by  gradual  pro- 
cesses to  the  surface,  where  it  will  show  itself  in  lan- 
guage and  in  action.  Hastening  this  birth  involves 
loss  of  stamina  and  quality  in  the  product.  The 
resistance  of  Nature  to  the  expression  of  a  thought  is 
not  the  resistance  of  a  wholly  hostile  medium;  deten- 


KNOWLEDGE   WE  DESIRE  259 

tion  is  a  spiritual  condition  for  health  and  viability,  not 
a  physical  condition  solely.  It  seems  fair  to  say  that 
the  more  significant  the  idea,  the  more  it  needs  to  be 
lived  with  before  it  is  uttered.  Idea  as  well  as  Matter 
must  be  "  mixed  with  labor "  before  it  can  become 
property.  And  perhaps  also  there  are  no  ideas  which 
are  mature  at  birth ;  but  they,  like  the  young  of  higher 
species,  must  pass  a  certain  time  in  the  open  under 
friendly  protection,  before  they  can  pass  current  among 
other  ideas,  the  tools  and  properties  of  all  men. 

It  thus  requires  time  and  Nature  in  order  that  a  mind 
shall  exist ;  must  it  not  also  require  time  and  Nature  in 
order  that  a  mind  shall  be  known?  We  do  not  wish  to 
know  the  mind  other  than  as  it  is ;  we  cannot  wish  to 
know  it,  then,  except  in  terms  of  its  own  traffic  with 
Nature,  both  in  acting  and  in  thinking;  in  possessing 
its  own  character,  and  in  possessing  its  own  ideas. 

It  is  no  accident,  therefore,  that  we  begin  our 
acquaintances  with  fellow-men  at  their  periphery  —  at 
the  point  of  their  visible  encounter  with  Nature,  with 
weather  and  the  common  physical  conditions  of  exist- 
ence. It  is  indeed  an  accident  (relatively  speaking) 
whether  a  man  work  out  his  special  career  in  shoe- 
leather  or  in  medicine  or  in  ink:  it  is  no  accident 
whether  he  meet  the  four  elements  and  make  up 
accounts  with  them.  And  however  far  acquaintance 
progresses,  we  cannot  omit  from  our  concept  of  the  man 
those  items,  even  trivial,  of  physical  behavior  into  which 
we  learn  to  condense  the  significance  of  large  vistas 
of  his  spiritual  quality,  —  the  shrug,  the  still  glance, 
the  nervous  step,  the  grasp  of  the  hand.  And  there  is 


260  HOW   MEN  KNOW  GOD 

some  ground  for  thinking  that  we  know  no  man  com- 
pletely until  we  have  been  with  him  in  the  wild,  and 
have  shared  with  him  some  first  hand  measurement  of 
idea  against  the  old  elemental  human  obstacles. 

But  Nature  has  other  properties  beside  obstinacy 
that  belong  inseparably  to  the  knowledge  of  souls. 
What  we  wish  to  know  of  a  man  is  doubtless  his  Idea 
(or,  as  Chesterton  says,  his  philosophy),  and  therewith 
himself:  but  we  can  know  an  idea  only  by  knowing 
whatever  that  idea  contains  and  aims  at.  Contents, 
we  have  considered  :  an  idea  is  always  an  idea  of  some- 
thing, and  the  all-available  first  something  is  physical 
stuff,  whatever  else  it  may  be.  As  for  the  aim  of  ideas, 
we  thought  that  all  ideas  aim  at  a  lodgment  in  Sub- 
stance,1 doubtless  first  seen  behind  Nature  ;  if  so,  no 
man  can  be  known  without  knowing  that  object.  The 
identity  of  personality,  we  thought,  was  bound  up  with 
some  changelessness  in  its  ultimate  object;  and  the 
unity  of  personality  in  some  unity  to  be  found  there  in 
the  world  beyond : 2  but  I  venture  to  say  that  unless 
changelessness  and  unity  were  discoverable  in  some 
character  of  physical  experience,  any  other  object  would 
work  against  great  odds  to  maintain  them.  For  reality 
cannot  detach  itself  from  the  experience  of  Nature: 
sensation  has  some  of  the  characters  and  dimensions  of 
reality  not  elsewhere  found.  Sensation  lends  to  expe- 
rience its  pungency,  its  vividness,  its  particularity. 
The  definite  separation  of  parts  in  Nature,  the  clear 
difference  between  position  and  position  in  space — no 
point  confused  with  any  other  —  make  the  world  of 
sense  the  place  where  all  definiteness  is  set  up,  where 

1  See  above,  p.  119.  2  See  above,  pp.  187. 


KNOWLEDGE  WE  DESIRE  261 

all  desire  for  clarity  and  differentiation  seeks  its  home. 
If  it  is  true,  then,  that  we  cannot  know  a  definite  idea 
or  being  save  as  that  being  has  a  definite  object ;  that 
we  cannot  know  a  vivid  being,  save  as  having  a  vivid 
object ;  that  we  cannot  individualize  that  being,  save  as 
that  being  has  objects  with  definite  differences;  that 
we  cannot  measure  or  estimate  any  being,  save  as  that 
being  has  objects  themselves  measurable,  quantitative : 
—  if  this  is  true,  we  see  that  in  ways  affecting  the  very 
foundations  of  personality,  the  knowledge  of  Nature, 
of  Nature  pungent  and  intense  with  sensation,  is  an 
integral  part  of  the  knowledge  of  another  mind.  These 
values  (vividness,  etc.)  of  physical  experience  are  not 
like  the  corresponding  values  of  social  experience,  — 
they  are,  so  far  as  they  go,  identical  with  social 
values  :  they  are  properties  of  mind  and  matter  at  the 
same  time. 

I  do  not  say  that  knowing  thus  the  objects  of  another 
mind  is  equivalent  to  knowing  that  mind ;  I  say  that 
such  knowledge  of  the  objects  is  a  necessary,  an  inte- 
gral part  of  social  consciousness,  even  of  ideal  social 
consciousness. 

It  is  not  indeed  sufficient  to  know  the  objects ;  we 
should  have  further  to  know  those  objects  as  being 
known  by  the  Other  Mind ;  we  must  find  the  idea  at 
work ;  we  must  verify  in  experience  our  simplest  defini- 
tion of  the  Other  Mind  —  an  Other-knower-of-physical- 
Nature.  We  want  the  center  as  well  as  the  periphery ; 
and  Nature  certainly  cannot  give  the  center  of  person- 
ality, the  idea  itself.  But  Nature  can  give  a  symbol 
of  the  center. 


262  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

We  have  so  far  had  little  to  say  of  the  body  with 
which  we  so  closely  identify  the  Other  Mind  ;  for  this 
identification  is  all-too-absorbing  —  we  forget  that  our 
knowledge  of  men  comes  as  much  from  observing  their 
environment  as  from  observing  their  bodies.  But  the 
body  is  after  all  that  with  which  Nature  is  handled ;  as 
the  idea  is  that  with  which  Nature  is  thought.  The 
body  is  a  symbol  of  the  idea :  it  stands  as  subject  to 
the  environment  as  object.  In  its  relation  to  its  physi- 
cal surroundings,  it  presents  a  physical  picture  of  the 
knowing-process.1  But  the  body  is  more  than  a  symbol. 

The  body  is  an  incredibly  intricate  and  exact  meta- 
phor of  every  inner  movement  of  that  Other  Mind.  To 
every  shade  of  thought  and  motive,  there  corresponds 
some  change  in  the  body,  reflecting  in  its  own  different 
sphere  each  type  of  variation  to  which  the  inner  state 
is  subject.  Man  still  "  looketh  on  the  outward  appear- 
ance "  only,  even  though  he  were  able  to  examine  the 
living  brain ;  but  remarkable  it  is  that  there  is  nothing 
in  "  the  heart  "not  faithfully  displayed  in  this  appear- 
ance, and  at  the  moment  of  its  occurrence. 

With  all  our  inability  to  gain  the  exact  key  to  the 
cipher ; 2  and  with  all  our  inadequacy  in  observing  these 

1  And  this  picture  is  so  significant  that  in  our  theories  of  knowledge, 
we  can  hardly  escape  it.     It  is  the  inveterate  source  of  that  dualistic  theory 
of  knowledge  which  we  have  condemned.     We  forget  that  We  who  thus 
see  the  Other's  knowing,  in  picture,  from  the  outside,  should  "be  included 
in  the  picture  to  give  the  whole  truth,  even  in  symbol. 

2  It  is  not  inconceivable  that  the  key  might  be  accurately  defined, 
to  some  degree.     Such  a  reading  of  the  metaphor  as  that  proposed  by 
Miinsterberg,  may  offer  a  conception  of  a  solution.     Quality  of  sensation, 
says  Miinsterberg,  is  represented  in  the  brain  by  the  place  of  excitation  ; 
intensity  by  energy  of  excitation;  vividness  by  energy  of  discharge  ;  value-tone 
by  place  of  discharge.     A  somewhat  different  suggestion,  differing  espe- 


KNOWLEDGE   WE  DESIRE  263 

subtle  physical  changes;  it  remains  true  that  the  body, 
if  we  will  take  it  so,  is  little  else  than  the  soul  made 
visible.  If  we  should  say  that  the  body  has  no  inde- 
pendent reality,  but  only  exists  as  a  bulletin  of  an  inner 
process ;  being  but  that  process  itself,  reporting  itself  to 
us  in  such  terms  as  we  can  physically  apprehend  :  —  if 
we  should  conceive  of  the  body  in  this  way,  we  should 
hardly  over-state  the  immediacy  with  which  it  presents 
externally  what  the  mind  internally  is,  and  not  in  its 
passing  phases  alone,  but  in  its  most  rooted  habits,  its 
oldest  memories,  its  most  permanent  wills  and  purposes. 
The  body  is  a  complete  metaphor  of  the  idea.1 

But,  further,  the  body  is  more  than  a  metaphor.  In 
some  phases,  it  shows  what  that  Other's  experience  liter- 
ally is.  Thus  time  is  the  same  for  both  body  and 
mind;  the  time  of  the  brain  process  is  identical  with  the 
time  of  the  psychosis  it  represents.  For  us  who  look 
on,  the  date  of  those  processes — if  we  know  what  they 
are — may  be  said  to  be  a  matter  of  direct  experience, — 
through  the  body.  Also,  from  the  position  which  the 
body  occupies  in  space,  a  particular  and  exclusive  per- 
spective view  of  the  visible  world  is  determined ;  and  we 

cially  with  regard  to  value-tone,  will  be  found  in  an  appended  essay,  page 
546:  but  it  will  be  seen  from  either  that  the  work  of  key-finding  is  the  main 
concern  of  psycho-physics,  —  a  science  of  definite  standing,  with  legitimate 
and  infinite  problem. 

1  The  body  is  the  manifestation  in  spatial  metaphor  of  the  will-to-live 
as  inborn  and  as  modified  by  experience  and  choice.  I  do  not  mean  that  this 
metaphor  can  be  read  by  simple  inspection  ;  for  in  the  body  other  records 
are  composed  with  the  record  of  the  will  :  the  will  of  the  world  beyond, 
as  it  attacks  the  inner  will  and  impinges  on  it,  leaves  its  trace  here  also. 
The  surface  of  the  body  is  the  shore-line  where  outgoing  and  incoming 
purposes  meet,  conflict  and  cross  ;  and  one  tale  confuses  the  clarity  of  the 
other,  —  yet  adds  the  data  without  which  the  other  were  less  than  true. 


264  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

who  look  on,  can  through  our  own  physical  experience 
know  something  of  the  spatial  experience  of  that  Other. 
Moreover,  as  the  place  of  that  body  alters  from  point 
to  point  continuously,  a  like  continuous  change  takes 
place  in  the  physical  experience  of  that  other;  the  two 
continuities  are  identical,  and  we  observe  that  con- 
tinuity. And  this  continuous  history,  which  cannot  be 
luplicated  by  any  other  mind,  is  taken  together  with  its 
view  of  the  Changeless,  to  form  the  ground- work  of 
its  individual  identity,  —  of  which,  thus,  through  our 
experience  of  that  body,  we  get  some  literal  glimpse. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  our  conceptions  of  dis- 
embodied spirit,  or  of  an  Other  whose  body  we  can- 
not locate  or  imagine,  tend  to  lose  just  these  qualities 
of  individuality  and  particularity  (as  early  survival  theo- 
ries and  spiritism  sufficiently  show) ;  we  find  ourselves 
impelled  to  assign  them  deliberately  a  place  or  seat  in 
Nature,  or  else  in  some  other  nature  accessible  to  us  in 
imagination,  in  order  to  save  their  personality  from 
obliteration  before  our  minds.  How  little,  then,  from 
our  ideal  of  social  experience  can  we  dismiss  the  expe- 
rience of  body. 

I  trust  I  may  be  pardoned  for  dwelling  thus  long  on 
considerations  that  are  familiar.  I  confess  that  this 
extraordinary  device  by  which  the  Other  Mind  presents 
itself  in  the  guise  of  a  body  in  the  midst  of  Nature 
seems  to  me  each  time  I  think  of  it  more  wonderful 
than  before.  The  inseparable  union  of  two  things  so 
disparate  as  social  experience  and  experience  of  Nature 
seem  to  be:  is  there  not  a  perpetual  amazement  in 
this?  It  would  be  less  amazing,  perhaps,  if  it  were  all 


KNOWLEDGE  WE  DESIRE  266 

pure  metaphor,  or  symbol,  or  the  mere  outside  of  what 
is  within;  but  we  have  noted  points  at  which  the  mate- 
rial world,  as  we  call  it,  ceases  to  be  a  metaphor  and 
shows  us,  as  it  were,  a  literal  edge  of  the  Other  Spirit 
shimmering  through  its  physical  encasements.  Surely 
there  can  be  no  accident,  or  superfluous  illusion,  or 
arbitrary  unnecessary  sundering  of  mind  from  mind 
in  such  a  union.  Nature  and  the  natural  body  must 
"belong  with  the  experience  of  Other  Mind,  even  in  its 
ideal  condition.  Of  myself,  I  seem  to  have  only  mind; 
of  the  Other, only  body:  and  yet,  as  I  think  it  through, 
there  seems  to  be  nothing  about  that  body  which  con- 
ceals the  spirit  —  body  seems  to  do  no  more  in  separating 
than  to  fix  and  define  the  simple  other-ness  of  that  Other 
from  myself;  in  all  other  respects  it  does  but  give  me 
that  Other  Mind  in  more  tangible  form  than  by  expe- 
rience of  its  inner  life  on  its  own  grounds  alone,  I 
could  have  it. 

Let  me  pursue  my  reflection  a  step  further.  I  have 
sometimes  sat  looking  at  a  comrade,  speculating  on 
this  mysterious  isolation  of  self  from  self.  Why  are 
we  so  made  that  I  gaze  and  see  of  thee  only  thy  Wall, 
and  never  Thee?  This  Wall  of  thee  is  but  a  movable 
part  of  the  Wall  of  my  world ;  and  I  also  am  a  Wall  to 
thee :  we  look  out  at  one  another  from  behind  masks. 
How  would  it  seem  if  my  mind  could  but  once  be  within 
thine;  and  we  could  meet  and  without  barrier  be  with 
each  other?  And  then  it  has  fallen  upon  me  like  a 
shock — as  when  one  thinking  himself  alone  has  felt  a 
presence  —  But  I  am  in  thy  soul.  These  things  around 
me  are  in  thy  experience.  They  are  thy  own ;  when  I 
touch  them  and  move  them  I  change  thee.  When 


266  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

I  look  on  them  I  see  what  thou  seest;  when  I  listen,  I 
hear  what  thou  nearest.  I  am  in  the  great  Room  of 
thy  soul;  and  I  experience  thy  very  experience.  For 
where  art  thou  ?  Not  there,  behind  those  eyes,  within 
that  head,  in  darkness,  fraternizing  with  chemical  pro- 
cesses. Of  these,  in  my  own  case,  I  know  nothing, 
uid  will  know  nothing;  for  my  existence  is  spent  not 
behind  my  Wall,  but  in  front  of  it.  I  am  there,  where 
I  have  treasures.  And  there  art  thou,  also.  This 
world  in  which  I  live,  is  the  world  of  thy  soul:  and 
being  within  that,  I  am  within  thee.  I  can  imagine 
no  contact  more  real  and  thrilling  than  this;  that  we 
should  meet  and  share  identity,  not  through  ineffable 
inner  depths  (alone),  but  here  through  the  foregrounds 
of  common  experience;  and  that  thou  shouldst  be — not 
behind  that  mask — but  here,  pressing  with  all  thy  con- 
sciousness upon  me,  containing  me,  and  these  things  of 
mine.  This  is  reality:  and  having  seen  it  thus,  I  can 
never  again  be  frightened  into  monadism  by  reflections 
which  have  strayed  from  their  guiding  insight. 

Any  connecting  medium  is  apt  to  appear  as  an  obstacle 
to  direct  relationship;  on  the  other  hand  any  obstacle 
may  discover  itself  to  be  a  mediator,  sign  of  unbroken 
continuity.  The  sea  separates, — or  the  sea  connects; 
it  cannot  do  one  without  doing  the  other  also.  So 
Nature  may  be  interpreted  in  its  relation  to  social  con- 
sciousness, as  the  visible  pledge  and  immediate  evidence 
of  our  living  contact.  If  there  be  any  social  conscious- 
ness, it  must  include  within  itself  just  such  physical 
appearances  as  we  have  been  reviewing,  even  in  its  ideal 
perfection. 


KNOWLEDGE  WE   DESIRE  267 

We  have  pictured  such  ideal  knowledge  of  the  Other ; 
we  have  faith  in  it — but  we  have  not  verified  it.  We 
have  still  to  seek  experience  of  the  center,  the  knowledge 
of  that  which  knows 


CHAPTER   XIX 

THAT   KNOWLEDGE   WE   HAVE 

ANY  experience  of  an  Other  Mind  which  I  could 
-£^-  either  wish  or  fancy  must  contain  in  it,  we  have 
thought,  a  World,  full  of  sense  and  variety,  full  of 
obstinacy,  and  with  substance  at  the  back  of  it — like 
this  present  world.  In  a  truly  social  experience,  such 
a  world  would  be  known  as  being  the  world  of  the 
Other  Mind.  That  world  would  be  known  by  me ;  but 
as  it  were  through  the  eyes  of  the  Other  Mind.  It 
would  be  in  some  sense  a  world  common  to  both  of  us; 
known  by  both  at  once. 

And  though  it  would  be  perhaps  conceivable  that  we 
might  carry  on  mutual  relations,  each  of  us  having  his 
own  separate  world  (as,  for  example,  I  might  imagine 
myself  in  dream  conversing  with  some  resident  of 
heaven  or  hell,  having  at  the  same  time  a  vision  of  that 
spirit's  world  and  reaching  some  understanding  of  him 
thereby) :  yet  all  real  understanding  and  mutual  meas- 
urement, mutual  judgment,  appreciation  of  character  and 
so  even  of  self-knowledge,  must  come  through  having 
the  same  world  with  him  throughout.  A  perfect  social 
experience  would  require  that  this  present  world  of 
Nature  should  be  known  as  being  the  World  of  the  Other, 
precisely  as  it  is  my  World. 

And  here  begins  our  final  enquiry.  For  as  it  seems 
to  me,  this  present  World  of  Nature  is  known  by  me  as 


THAT  KNOWLEDGE   WE   HAVE  269 

being,  in  just  this  sense,  a  common  World:  it  seems 
to  me,  indeed,  that  it  is  not  otherwise  known  —  that  is, 
that  a  knowledge  of  Other  Knower  is  an  integral  part 
of  the  simplest  knowledge  of  Nature  itself. 

It  is  more  readily  granted  that  social  consciousness 
involves  nature-consciousness,  than  that  nature-con- 
sciousness involves  social  consciousness.  If  for  no 
other  reason,  at  least  for  this :  that  our  experience  of 
Nature  is  constant;  whereas  our  social  experience  is,  at 
best,  intermittent  —  we  can  and  often  do  experience 
Nature  by  itself.  It  is  enough  if  we  can  find  a  genuine 
social  experience  now  and  then  —  we  have  not  yet  done 
so  much  as  this  —  but  to  make  such  experience  an 
organic  part  of  nature-experience  would  be  to  make  it 
perpetual. 

Yet  I  confess  that  I  cannot  find  a  genuine  social 
experience  at  all,  except  as  a  continuous  experience.  It 
appears  to  me  that  all  three  types  of  object  are  inter- 
mittent in  the  same  sense,  and  continuous  in  the  same 
sense.  Intermittent  enough  is  self-consciousness;  yet 
self-consciousness  is  always  with  us.  Intermittent  is 
also  the  consciousness  of  Nature,  as  an  object  of  direct 
attention ;  yet  the  undertone  of  Nature's  presence  never 
deserts  me,  even  in  deep  sleep.  In  a  way  closely  simi- 
lar to  that  persistent  awareness  of  my  Self,  which  is 
compatible  with  the  most  fitful  movements  of  attention 
to  Self,  is  the  awareness  of  Other  Mind  persistently 
present  in  experience,  though  doubtless  less  readily  dis- 
coverable than  any  other.  Inseparably  bound  up  as  I 
think  with  the  continuous  experience  of  Nature.  And 
such  continuous  experience  is  the  foundation  of  all  the 


270  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

rest.  I  shall  attempt,  first  of  all,  to  make  clear  that 
there  must  be  such  continuity,  if  there  is  to  be  any 
social  experience  at  all. 

The  chief  elements  of  intermittency  in  social  experi- 
ence are  removed  when  we  look  away  from  the  body  of 
the  Other  and  regard  his  environing  world  of  objects. 
It  is  in  these,  we  have  said,  that  we  know  him,  quite 
as  much  as  in  his  body.  His  body  appears  and  disap- 
pears to  our  sight;  but  his  environment  does  not  dis- 
appear. It  is  true  that  these  immediate  objects  of  mine 
do  cease,  when  he  is  gone,  to  occupy  his  consciousness, 
and  can  no  longer  be  counted  in  his  environment.  But 
his  experience  of  Nature  was  not  limited  to  immediate 
objects,  and  never  is  so  limited.  Any  idea  of  a  thing, 
is  an  idea  of  that  thing  placed  in  a  world  of  space  and 
energy  which  remains  a  constant  object.  Our  Space 
does  not  move  as  we  move  about  in  it,  nor  does  our 
idea  of  it  alter ;  our  placings  are  successful,  coherent, 
unconf  used,  and  for  any  moment  absolute,  only  because 
our  ideas  reach  an  unvarying  field  for  these  varying 
locations.  If,  therefore,  at  any  time  I  have  known  an 
Other ;  and  in  knowing  him  have  known  Nature  as  his 
object;  then  this  same  Nature,  —  with  its  Space-field, 
Force-field,  and  the  like  —  does  not  cease  to  be  his 
Object  when  he  disappears. 

As  my  own  physical  world  is  not  bounded,  at  any 
time,  by  the  partition  or  forest  or  hill  that  happens 
to  limit  my  vision,  but  extends  with  my  Space  in  all 
directions  indefinitely,  —  so  does  his  physical  world  indef- 
initely extend,  wherever  he  may  be  —  reaches  through- 
out my  Space,  reaches  me  and  my  place,  reaches  Sub- 
stance —  that  same  Substance  which  I  also  reach  as  my 


THAT  KNOWLEDGE  WE  HAVE  271 

ultimate  object.  If  I  have  once  got  into  his  world,  I 
cannot  get  out  of  it  while  he  endures,  — any  more  than 
he  can  get  out  of  my  world,  so  long  as  I  can  mean  him; 
and  these  fundamental  objects  of  mine,  which  I  sum  up 
in  the  word  Nature,  if  they  have  ever  been  common 
objects,  common  to  him  and  me,  can  never  thereafter 
cease  to  be  common  objects.  If  iny  own  continuous 
experience  of  Nature  has  ever  been  a  social  experience 
it  can  never  thereafter  lose  its  social  reference. 

But  I  seem  to  imply  that  there  can  be  a  beginning 
of  social  experience,  and  so  a  time  when  it  was  not  — 
a  time  when  my  experience  of  Nature  was  mine  alone. 
What  I  am  required  to  show  is  that  social  experience 
has  no  beginning,  except  with  physical  experience 
itself :  that  my  knowledge  of  Nature  and  of  Other 
Mind  are  in  their  whole  history  interlocked,  and 
inseparable.  If  Nature  is  ever  common  object,  it  has 
always  been  common  object. 

Let  us  consider  how  a  social  experience  might  be 
supposed  to  begin,  as  at  times  it  does  appear  to  begin, 
even  abruptly.  I  think  myself  alone,  for  example,  and 
with  uncomfortable  surprise  find  myself  observed.  It 
seems  to  me  that  I  experience  a  jarring  change  of 
scene  :  my  various  objects  have  now  to  be  connected 
up,  in  swift  series,  with  the  intruder's  eyes.  They 
have  been  exclusive  objects ;  they  have  suddenly  and 
perforce  become  common.  They  are  all  seared  with 
this  new  relationship,  as  with  a  running  breath  of 
flame,  and  delivered  over  to  joint  ownership.  Such 
readjustments  often  take  perceptible  time  to  effect. 
Have  we  not  here  a  sufficient  contrast  between  solitude 


272  HOW  MEN   KNOW  GOD 

and  society,  showing  that  social  experience  may  begin 
—  being  imposed  as  an  addition  upon  an  experience 
not  social  ? 

What  such  a  transition  does  unmistakably  show  is 
that  exclusive  property  in  the  contents  of  experience  is 
possible  and  may  have  distinct  value  attached  to  it. 
Such  exclusive  property  is  made  possible  by  sensible 
barriers,  such  as  opaqueness  and  distance.  When  I 
say,  "I  am  entirely  alone  and  unobserved,"  I  am  put- 
ting my  trust  in  these  barriers.  But  when  I  resort  to 
a  barrier,  I  confess  that  the  objects  which  I  thereby  seek 
to  monopolize  or  conceal  are  in  some  danger  of  being 
known  by  Others.  They  are  already  thought  of  by 
me  as  being  sharable.  And  if  they  are  sharable,  it 
is  because  they  are  already  in  the  World  of  an  Other 
Mind ;  there  are  continuous  lines  through  space 
between  him  and  me ;  our  world  of  Nature  is  already 
common.  Is  it  not  clear  that  when  I  suppose  myself 
alone,  and  regard  my  solitude  as  an  achievement,  I  am 
in  that  very  thought  acknowledging  my  world  of  Space 
and  Nature  to  be  a  world  common  to  me  and  Others? 
My  negative  sociability  has  a  very  positive  social  con- 
sciousness at  its  basis. 

What  such  experiences  imply  and  illustrate  may  be 
more  compactly  stated  in  terms  of  the  logic  of  com- 
munication, as  follows  :  In  order  that  any  two  beings 
should  establish  communication,  they  must  already 
have  something  in  common.  For  when  I  consider  the 
two  beings,  prior  to  their  communication,  as  apart 
from  one  another,  I  must  consider  at  the  same  time  the 
field  through  which  they  must  pass  to  approach  each 
other:  and  this  field  is  already  a  common  field.  Two 


THAT  KNOWLEDGE   WE   HAVE  273 

beings  wholly  independent,  having  no  common  region 
to  measure  their  distance  from  one  another,  having 
between  them  no  continuity  through  which  to  travel 
toward  each  other,  are  lacking  in  any  "  toward  "  — 
are  unable  therefore  to  approach  each  other,  cannot 
come  together.  All  actual  approach  implies  a  deeper- 
going  presence  as  an  accomplished  fact. 

Given  a  minimal  core  of  communication,  and  further 
communication  may  spin  itself  out  upon  that  core,  may 
grow  intense  and  varied,  develop  its  ups  and  downs,  its 
relative  presences  and  absences.  But  given  nothing  at 
all  —  nothing  at  all  can  happen.  If  then,  experience 
ever  becomes  actually  social,  it  has,  in  more  rarefied 
condition,  always  been  so;  and  hence  is,  in  the  same 
fundamental  sense,  continuously  so.1 

There  is  some  satisfaction  in  reducing  our  ques- 
tion to  this  alternative :  that  social  experience  is  either 
always  present  or  never  present.  If  now  we  can  show 
that  we  have  at  any  time  a  veritable  experience  of 

1  There  is  indeed  no  sufficient  reason  for  supposing  that  the  sociality 
of  my  nature -experience  continues  to  exist  after  my  fellow  has  gone  in 
any  different  sense  than  before  he  appeared.  The  episode  of  his  coming 
and  going  does  not  change  the  physical  aspect  of  my  world  ;  those  objects 
of  Nature  seem  intrinsically  ready  to  be  observed  by  an  Other  Mind,  to  be 
essentially  public  in  their  constitution.  If  I  were  actually  alone  in  this 
same  cosmos,  it  is  difficult  to  think  that  I  should  be  without  the  idea  of 
possible  Others,  conceived  of  as  sharing  it  with  me  ;  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  Nature  could  be  experienced  as  simply  meine  Vorstellung  —  for  the 
physical  object  itself,  the  common  thing,  seems  to  present  itself  as  numer- 
ously knowable,  having  many  unused  knowable  aspects  or  valencies  which 
I  with  my  single  point  of  view  can  never  exhaust.  Nature  seems  struc- 
turally common,  or  let  us  say  commune  ;  made  up  with  reference  to  many 
co-experiencing  minds.  My  thought  of  Nature  suffers  no  jar  as  men 
come  and  go,  for  soci-ability  is  its  element.  In  experiencing  it,  I  am 
potentially  experiencing  the  Other,  and  continuously. 


274  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

Other  Mind,  we  show  that  we  have  such  experience 
continually.  I  believe  that  this  can  be  shown. 

For  suppose  that  experience  is  never  social.  In 
making  this  supposition,  we  mean  to  contrast  the  sup- 
posed non-social  experience  with  a  supposed  social 
experience.  In  imagining  my  experience  to  be  con- 
fined to  myself  and  my  objects,  I  admit  or  assume  that 
I  have  an  Idea  of  my  experience  not-so-confined ;  that 
I  know  what  a  social  experience  would  be  like.  Now  I 
submit  that  this  Idea  of  a  social  experience  would 
not  be  possible,  unless  such  an  experience  were  actual. 
Otherwise  stated, — In  any  sense  in  which  I  can  imagine, 
or  think,  or  conceive  an  experience  of  Other  mind,  in 
that  same  sense  I  have  an  experience  of  Other  Mind, 
apart  from  which  I  should  have  no  such  Idea. 

For  every  supposition  we  may  make  to  the  effect 
that  our  idea  of  Other  Mind  is  a  "  mere  idea  "  to  which 
no  real  experience  corresponds,  —  that  our  supposed 
social  experience  is,  in  reality,  subjective,  —  implies 
that  we  have  in  mind  a  type  of  experience  in  com- 
parison with  which  we  can  condemn  our  supposed 
social  experience  as  merely  subjective.  But  the  only 
type  of  experience  in  comparison  with  which  any  ex- 
perience can  be  judged  as  merely  subjective,  is  a  non- 
subjective  experience.  The  only  point  of  view  from 
which  our  supposed  social  experience  can  be  criticized 
as  incomplete  is  the  point  of  view  of  social  experience 
itself.  The  only  ground  upon  which  this  idea  can  be 
judged  a  "  mere  idea  "  is  the  ground  of  this  same  idea 
as  not  mere,  namely,  as  actually  bringing  me  into  pres- 
ence of  Mind  which  is  not  my  own. 

Leibniz,  for  example,  judges  that  all  experience  is 


THAT  KNOWLEDGE  WE  HAVE  275 

monadic,  and  that  monads  do  not  in  actuality  experi- 
ence each  other,  though  to  themselves  they  seem  to  do 
so.  In  making  this  hypothesis,  Leibniz  presents  to 
himself  the  world  of  monads,  and  he  knows  their  rela- 
tions to  be  other  than  they  seem :  he  at  any  rate  occupies 
a  non-monadic  position,  is  for  the  time  being  an  inter- 
monadic  Mind.  And  any  one  who  judges  that  he  — 
and  God —  know  the  actual  reach  of  ideas  to  fall  short 
of  their  apparent  reach,  does  thereby  assert  that  his 
idea  has  not  thus  fallen  short.  There  is  no  degree  of 
outwardness  of  which  we  can  think ;  no  degree  of  real- 
ity which  we  incline  to  deny  to  idea ;  but  in  that  thought 
we  have  claimed  it  for  our  idea.  Let  me  represent  to 
myself  the  Other  Subject,  his  living  center,  as  inac- 
cessible to  my  experience ;  then  either  I  deny  myself 
nothing  conceivable,  or  else  I  have  that  which  I  deny. 

An  objection  (or,  let  me  say,  the  objection):  may  not 
this  idea  of  a  genuine  social  experience,  which  you  say 
guarantees  the  experience,  be  an  ideal,  i.e.,  a  conception 
of  something  we  may  desire  and  think  of,  which  we  may 
well  use  to  criticize  what  we  have,  admitting  that  we 
have  it  not  f  Surely,  not  every  ideal  implies  the  expe- 
rience, but  rather  the  contrary. 

Answer :  An  ideal  is  either  an  extension  of  experience 
as  given,  or  an  innate  standard. 

The  idea  of  a  genuine  experience  of  Other  Mind  is 
not  an  extension  of  other  types  of  experience.  Imag- 
ination has  its  ways  of  building  improvements  on 
experience  by  combining,  enlarging,  extending  what  is 
given,  according  to  known  types  of  relation.  But  if 
the  idea  of  Other  Mind  were  not  already  given,  it  could 


276  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

not  be  built  up  in  this  way.  Certainly  not  by  any 
arrangement  of  physical  ideas  in  physical  relations;  nor 
yet  by  any  arrangement  of  psychical  ideas  in  psychical 
relations;  nor  by  any  union  of  physical  and  psychical. 
To  reach  the  idea  from  these,  we  must  use  the  special 
relation  of  Other-self-hood,  which  is  the  idea  itself. 
Since  my  idea  of  social  experience  is  uniquely  different 
from  all  such  constructions  within  the  physical  and 
psychical  worlds,  it  is  not  an  ideal  based  on  them.  It 
is  not  an  ideal  by  construction  at  all;  what  we  seek  is 
simply  the  thing,  social  experience,  in  its  unique  differ- 
ence from  all  immanent  variations  of  other  fields  of  expe* 
rience.  If  this  unique  difference  is  an  ideal  merely,  it 
is  not  an  ideal  by  imaginative  construction,  —  it  must 
be  innate. 

To  say  that  an  idea  is  innate,  in  Cartesian  fashion, 
may  mean  simply  that  it  is  once  for  all  there,  and  there 
is  nothing  more  to  be  said  about  it.  Or  it  may  mean 
that  the  idea  is  due  ultimately  to  some  outer  source 
(ancestral  or  divine) ;  whereby  we  only  reinvest  in  that 
Outer  Source  the  difficulty  of  the  idea  in  question  — 
namely,  how  my  ideas  can  reach  that  which  is  not-myself . 
Or,  it  may  mean,  in  Kantian  fashion,  that  the  idea  is  a 
native  and  necessary  form  by  which  the  Self  orders  the 
material  of  its  experience,  as  otherwise  given.  Of  these, 
the  Kantian  form  is  doubtless  the  strongest:  and  our 
social  experience  does  most  closely  resemble,  as  we  have 
noticed,  a  form  of  interpretation,  a  successful  hypoth- 
esis clothing  our  manifold  experience-stuff  —  ultimately 
sensation — with  social  meaning. 

As  an  hypothesis  our  idea  of  Other  Mind  has  certain 
interesting  peculiarities.  That  it  is  not  framed  imagina- 


THAT  KNOWLEDGE  WE  HAVE  277 

tively  of  materials  taken  elsewhere  from  experience,  we 
have  observed.  But  further,  there  is  no  way  in  which 
it  could  be  proved  false,  or  even  brought  to  other  test 
than  its  use.  There  are  various  ways  in  which  my 
social  judgments  may  err,  and  suffer  correction  in  expe- 
rience. Thus  I  may  impute  to  a  friend  a  false  motive, 
accepting  his  statement  that  I  am  in  error.  This  judg- 
ment clearly  relies  on  the  more  authentic  social  expe- 
rience for  correction.  So  with  other  errors,  as  by  mis- 
taking the  identity  of  a  person,  or  by  mistaking  a  post 
for  a  man ;  these  are  corrected  with  reference  to  a  bet- 
.ter  social  experience.  There  is  no  type  of  error  to  which 
social  experience  is  subject  which  can  refer  me  away 
from  social  experience  for  correction,  —  none  which  can 
send  me  back  into  myself  for  final  court  of  appeal.  As 
an  hypothesis,  the  idea  of  Other  Mind  cannot  be  tested, 
—  nor  can  it  be  withdrawn. 

But  now,  when  we  suppose  that  this  idea  of  ours  is 
an  hypothesis  only,  what  more  than  hypothesis  do  we 
think  it  might  be  ?  We  think,  do  we  not,  that  it  might 
be  a  genuine  social  experience,  and  no  mere  hypothe- 
sis ?  But  "  genuine  social  experience  "  is  the  hypothe- 
sis itself,  if  it  is  such.  And  the  contrast  between  real 
and  apparent  in  social  experience  is  only  such  contrast 
as  social  experience  has  already  furnished  us  with.  My 
idea  of  social  experience  is  then,  of  social  experience  as 
it  is :  my  ideal  and  my  idea  are  the  same,  —  they  refer 
me  to  what  I  have. 

But  let  me  make  clear  that  in  referring  our  idea  of 
Other  Mind  to  experience,  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is 
derived,  in  Humian  fashion,  as  a  copy  from  a  previous 
impression.  It  would  be  as  little  to  the  point  to  suggest 


278  HOW  MEN  KNOW   GOD 

that  my  idea  of  myself  is  derived  from  a  previous 
impression  of  myself.  My  idea  of  myself  is  at  the  same 
time  an  experience  of  myself  (unless  my  idea  flies  wild). 
So,  unless  as  frequently  happens  I  use  some  paper  cur- 
rency in  referring  to  Other  Mind,  my  idea  of  Other 
Mind  is  at  the  same  time  an  experience  of  Other  Mind. 
Let  me  but  think  what  I  mean  by  the  Other  Mind,  and 
there,  as  I  find  my  Self,  I  find  the  Other  also.  As  an 
idea  of  a  fundamental  and  constant  experience,  bound 
up  with  my  equally  permanent  experiences  of  Self  and 
Nature,  this  idea  is  not  prior  to  experience;  but  is  indeed 
prior  to  all  further  social  experience,  to  all  such  as  is 
intermittent  and  subject  to  error.  This  fundamental 
experience,  and  its  idea,  deserve,  from  their  position  in 
knowledge,  to  be  called  a  concrete  a  priori  knowledge. 

Of  the  logic  of  this  proof  that  we  have  actual  expe- 
rience of  Other  Mind  I  shall  have  more  to  say  in  a  later 
chapter.  It  stands  before  us  now  somewhat  barely. 
Unconvincingly,  too,  unless  we  can  clothe  with  some  liv- 
ing sense  that  strange  assertion  that  Nature  is  always 
present  to  experience  as  known  by  an  Other.  That  we 
cannot  genuinely  conceive  ourselves  as  mentally  alone  in 
this  cosmos,  though  we  can  well  imagine  ourselves  bod- 
ily alone.  That  the  inherent  publicity  of  Nature,  the 
fitness  of  all  its  objects  to  be  communally  experienced,  is 
no  empty  potentiality,  but  a  potentiality,  founded  (like 
other  potentialities)  on  some  actuality.  We  must  now 
try  to  bring  that  experience  more  vividly  before  us ;  for 
we  can  hardly  believe  in  an  experience  which  we  are  yet 
unable  to  disentangle,  or  verify  in  ourselves.  But  let 
this  conviction  stand  as  a  firm  ground  in  our  further 


THAT  KNOWLEDGE   WE   HAVE  279 

search  :  that  we  should  have  no  idea  of  an  Other  Mind 
or  of  a  social  experience  unless  we  had  the  experience 
itself.  That  in  whatever  sense  we  can  think,  or  imagine, 
or  even  deny,  the  reality  of  that  experience,  —  in  that 
same  sense  it  must  be  and  is  real  to  us. 

There  are,  I  think,  three  natural  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  distinguishing  the  undertone  of  social  experience 
amid  the  general  rumble  of  the  ground-levels  of  expe- 
rience. First,  that  we  cannot  identify  that  constant 
Other  with  any  particular  individual,  yet  an  Other 
must  be  an  individual.  Second,  we  cannot  help  regard- 
ing the  experience  of  Nature  as  sufficient  in  itself,  the 
presence  of  Others  in  the  world  being  additional  and 
wholly  separable  fact — that  the  experience  of  Nature 
may  be  at  the  same  time  a  social  experience  we  can 
more  readily  believe  than  that  it  must  be.  Third,  that 
we  cannot  verify  the  social  experience  socially,  in  the 
same  way  that  we  verify  the  facts  of  Nature.  I  shall 
consider  these  three,  beginning  with  the  last  named,  — 
reserving  the  others  to  the  following  chapter. 

An  object  of  knowledge  or  experience  is,  for  the  most 
part,  a  thing  which  you  and  I  can  verify  together.  I 
assert  that  something  is  true,  in  history,  in  physics,  in 
mathematics ;  and  when  I  make  such  statements  to  you, 
I  mean  that  you  also  can  go  to  the  same  facts  and 
experiences  and  find  the  same  thing  that  I  have  found. 
The  truth  of  my  assertion  means  that  it  is  valid  for  you 
and  other  real  persons  in  the  same  way  that  it  is  valid 
for  me.  This  association  of  minds  which  we  call  "  we," 
accustomed  as  it  is  to  sit  in  united  judgment  upon  facts 
external  to  itself,  cannot  in  like  fashion  sit  in  judgment 


280  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

upon  itself.  If  we  doubt  "  we/7  we  know  not  to  whom 
to  appeal.  We  can  hardly  find  our  fundamental  social- 
ity, because  we  can  hardly  get  so  far  away  from  it  as 
to  doubt  it. 

Nature  is  pre-eminently  the  world  of  socially  verifiable 
things,  the  world  of  scientific  research  —  which  is  gen- 
eral human  collaboration  on  a  common  object.  We 
look  at  Nature  through  the  eyes  of  a  social  world.  As 
we  look  at  physical  things  through  two  eyes  at  once, 
and  our  prospect  thereby  acquires  something  in  solidity 
and  depth  ;  so  in  quite  similar  fashion  we  see  objects 
and  truths  in  general  through  two  pairs  of  eyes,  through 
indefinite  multitudes  of  eyes,  and  thereby  acquire  that 
deepest  solidity  of  judgment  which  we  call  "  universal- 
ity." Universality  is  a  social  habit ;  the  necessary  habit 
of  looking  at  any  truth  as  if  not  I  alone  but  the  whole 
conscious  universe  were  looking  at  it  with  me.  The 
simplest  judgment  of  physical  things  is  universal  in  this 
sense  ;  the  most  particular  matter  of  fact,  as  I  place  it 
in  my  world  of  Nature,  is  so  placed  by  help  of  this  deep 
sense  of  the  "cloud  of  witnesses"  to  whom  this  fact 
belongs,  as  well  as  to  myself.  Without  this  habitual 
democracy  of  judgment,  this  habitual  loss  of  my  life  in 
the  universal  judgment,  I  can  have  no  life  at  all  in  Nature 
or  in  the  world  of  truth. 

And  just  because  my  social  consciousness  is  that  with 
which  I  am  thinking  my  world,  I  am  not  at  the  same 
time  and  in  the  same  way  thinking  of  it,  — r  as  one  does 
not  see  his  own  eyes  in  the  usual  processes  of  seeing 
things.  When  we  speak  of  experience,  what  is  called 
to  mind  is  usually  experience  with  the  experiencers  left 
out ;  experience  just  so  far  as  it  can  easily  be  common 


THAT  KNOWLEDGE   WE   HAVE  281 

object  and  no  farther.  Hume,  in  his  examination  of 
experience,  found  no  Self  ;  he  had  gone  out  of  his  house, 
as  one  noted  rejoinder  had  it,  and  looking  in  at  the 
window  was  unable  to  find  himself  at  home.  In  truth 
it  is  not  I  alone,  but  we  who  go  out,  and  cannot  be  dis- 
covered by  ourselves  in  that  house.  And  that  same 
reflexive  turn  of  consciousness  which  takes  notice  of 
Self,  as  of  something  always  present,  must,  if  we  are 
right,  discover  the  Other  also,  my  other  I,  perpetual 
sustainer  of  universality  in  my  judgments  of  experience. 
When,  then,  we  think  of  " experience"  as  something 
solitary  and  subjective,  we  are  cutting  it  off  from  our- 
selves, and  calling  upon  the  Other  Mind  to  view  it  so, 
together  with  us.  Holding  it  thus,  at  arm's  length,  we 
criticize  it,  and  as  we  thought,  by  means  of  an  idea  of 
something  better :  we  criticize  our  solitary  experience 
by  the  standard  of  a  conceived  social  experience  which 
would  be  more  comprehensive.  And  this  idea  of  a 
better,  we  thought,  confessed  the  reality  of  that  better. 
In  truth,  we  should  read  the  situation  the  other  way. 
That  experience,  thus  held  off  at  arm's  length  and  crit- 
icized, is  not  the  Real  Experience,  judged  by  standard 
of  an  Idea  of  a  better.  That  criticized  experience  is 
but  a  conceptual  part  of  reality,  abstracted  from  its  con- 
text, and  criticized  not  by  idea  (alone)  but  by  the  reality 
itself.  The  real  and  the  conceptual  have  changed  places. 
It  is  through  my  present  inseparable  community  with 
The  Other  that  I  know  that  abstracted  "experience" 
to  be  incomplete. 


CHAPTER  XX 
OUR  NATURAL  REALISM  AND  REALISM  ABSOLUTE 

OUR  second  difficulty  in  finding  social  experience  is 
that  the  experience  of  Nature,  though  admitting 
social  experience  as  an  appendage,  still  seems  to  be 
something  else  than  social  experience,  separable  from 
it,  sufficient  in  itself.  Any  particular  person  may  come 
and  go,  making  no  difference  to  my  experience  of 
Nature.  Come  and  go,  not  only  from  my  eye-sight,  but 
from  this  World  of  Time  itself.  Any  particular  per- 
son, Nature  is  independent  of;  and  if  of  any,  then,  we 
reason,  of  all.  The  soci-ability  of  Nature  is  an  extra- 
neous circumstance.  Nature  first  is,  and  then  is  expe- 
rienced by  us  ;  Nature  first  is,  and  then  is  mine  —  and 
yours  —  and  theirs.  This  is  our  besetting  natural 
Realism ;  and  it  is  the  most  persistent  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  finding  social  experience. 

It  is  fair  to  recall,  at  first,  that  if  this  natural  Real- 
ism is  right,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  social  experience. 
If  every  mind  may  come  and  take  its  own  view  of 
Nature  without  making  any  difference  to  Nature,  hence 
without  weaving  into  the  nature-experience  of  an  Other 
any  necessary  reference  to  itself,  then  a  solitary  experi- 
ence of  Nature  is  possible.  But  if  a  pure  solitude  is 
possible,  it  is  perpetual.  Experience  is  always  and  nec- 
essarily social,  or  never,  —  these  are  our  alternatives. 

But  we  wish,  if  possible,  to  meet  our  natural  Realism 


OUR  NATURAL  REALISM  283 

on  its  own  ground,  rather  than  on  our  own,  and  satisfy 
it.  Its  own  ground  is,  that  Nature  becomes  a  medium 
for  social  intercourse  as  it  were  accidentally  and  exter- 
nally, as  one  picks  up  a  stone  which  chance  has  shaped 
to  the  hand.  Nature-experience  becomes  associated  with 
social  consciousness;  but  is  itself  to  be  defined  independ- 
ently, or  as  That  Which  serves  social  consciousness. 
In  knowing  Nature  I  am  indeed  always  dimly  conscious 
of  its  fortunate  publicity.  I  know  myself  as  merging,  on 
this  side  of  my  experience,  with  whatever  Other  Minds 
may  happen  to  be  extant.  But  all  this  social  reference 
is  indeterminate,  and  adventitious ;  it  rides  on  the  out- 
side of  Nature.  Nature  is  hospitable ;  offers  infinite  and 
permanent  possibilities  of  sociality ;  caring  not,  how- 
ever, whether  many  points  of  view  are  occupied,  or  all, 
or  none.  Nature-drama  goes  on,  careless  of  the  seat- 
ing of  the  house,  or  of  the  gossip  there.  This  is  our 
natural  Realism,  so  far  as  it  has  bearing  on  social 
experience. 

Now  all  this  is  report  of  truth.  I  find  Nature  ready 
made,  and  so  do  you.  This  world,  in  its  constitution,  is 
not  my  doing ;  nor  is  it  the  doing  of  any  one  else  situ- 
ated as  I  am,  nor  of  any  assemblage  of  such.  Nature  is 
object  of  our  knowledge ;  and  knowledge  is  co-extensive 
with  empiricism,  — that  is,  with  the  attitude  of  tak- 
ing what  is  given,  in  obedience  (not,  of  course,  without 
activity,  nor  without  hope).  Have  we  not  contended, 
at  some  length,  that  the  ultimate  object  of  knowl- 
edge has  its  independence  of  us;  its  perfect  priority,  to 
which  we  who  wish  to  live  submit  ?  It  is  true  that  any 
Mind  depends  on  Nature  as  Nature  does  not  depend  on 
that  Mind.  I  would  not  seek  to  minimize  this  independ- 


284  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

ent  priority,  even  obstinacy,  of  Nature.  For  it  is  just 
in  this  character  of  ultimate  opposition  to  me  and  my 
wishes,  of  high  superiority  to  any  doings  or  thinkings 
of  mine,  that  Nature  begins  to  assume  for  me  the 
unmistakable  aspect  of  Other  Mind.  We  must  dwell 
for  a  time  on  this  point. 

So  long  as  our  attention  is  given  to  a  physical  object 
for  its  own  sake,  or  for  the  sake  of  further  physical  ends, 
the  independence  of  the  object  seems  exhausted  in  that 
mysterious  obstinacy  which  demands  our  submissive 
attention,  our  empirical  attitude.  But  that  obstinacy 
does  not  fail  to  call  forth  enquiry ;  it  does  appear  as  a 
"mystery."  We  cannot  accept  the  simple  There-ness 
of  Nature  as  final  truth  (any  more  than  we  could  accept 
pain  as  the  last  word  of  pain).  We  require  to  know 
why  it  is  there,  and  by  what  principle  we  are  made 
dependent  upon  it. 

The  "  objectivity  "  of  Nature  requires  to  be  explained : 
it  admits  explanation.  This  is  the  critical  feature  of 
the  case.  For  in  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  conceive  the 
obstinacy  of  Nature  as  explained  by,  or  dependent  upon, 
some  further  source  of  strength,  we  approach  the  dis- 
covery of  a  more  fundamental  object.  We  shall  find, 
I  think,  that  physical  experience,  taken  as  a  solitary 
experience,  has  no  very  perfect  independence  of  my  Self; 
is  not  so  external  but  that  it  can  at  any  moment  be 
conceived  internal  to  me — and  does  actually  roll  away 
from  sensation  into  memory  (which  exists  only  in  me) 
instantaneously  (as  in  a  rolling  wheel  the  point  of  con- 
tact instantly  leaves  the  ground)  and  without  substan- 
tial change :  —  on  all  these  things  idealism  has  suffi- 
ciently enlarged  (and  the  force  of  this  idealistic  motive 


OUR  NATURAL  REALISM  285 

comes  from  conceiving  Nature-experience  as  solitary). 
We  shall  find  that  that  which  is  most  completely  inde- 
pendent of  me,  external  to  me,  is  not  physical  experi- 
ence per  se,  but  Other  Self.  The  independence  of  Na- 
ture hangs  from  this  more  fundamental  independence, 
and  not  vice  versa.  The  objectivity  of  the  physical 
object  is  derivative :  it  shines  by  reflected  light,  not  by 
its  own. 

Let  us  present  experience  to  ourselves  in  simple  terms, 
as  an  interplay  between  an  active  Self  and  an  active 
External  Reality.  Grant,  tentatively,  a  degree  of  inde- 
pendent activity  to  each.  My  own  independent  activ- 
ity in  making  experience  what  it  is  may  be  fairly  esti- 
mated by  that  force  of  expectant  imagination  with 
which  I  meet  and  place  the  materials  that  sensation 
offers  me.  The  mass  of  idea  which  I  call  my  Self, 
my  "  apperceptive  mass,"  carries  on  a  spontaneous  self- 
projection,  running-ahead  in  anticipation  of  experience  : 
and  no  experience  can  come  to  me  which  is  not  an 
answer  to  certain  organic  questionings  set  out  to  receive 
events.  Though  I  do  not  determine  what  the  detail 
and  particularity  of  experience  may  be,  yet  I  do  expect 
detail  and  particularity.  This  scouting-wave  of  my 
idea-system  thus  defines  a  complete  physical  world,  — 
in  all  but  the  last  touch  of  answer-to-question.  My 
present  moment  expects  the  next,  in  all  but  the  last 
touch  of  change  which  sensation  must  give.  Large 
world-making  powers  must,  on  such  showing,  be  cred- 
ited to  the  Self.  Cut  off  suddenly  that  relation  to 
External  Reality  in  sensation  ;  and  this  world-expecting, 
world-forecasting,  world-spinning  activity  does  not  cease 


286  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

— physical  worlds  still  exist  for  me  in  imagination,  or 
in  dream.  Here  is  a  complete  dream-Space,  dream- 
Nature  and  nature-processes,  dream-social-conditions  too, 
and  all  filled  in  with  sufficient  dream-detail  and  partic- 
ularity, on  whose  development  I  expectantly  wait  with 
all  appearance  of  passive,  empirical  attitude  —  though 
it  is  my  own  world. 

There  is  large  creative  power  here ;  yet  such,  we  think, 
as  a  touch  of  sensation  would  shatter  like  a  house  of 
cards.  That  same  own-made-world  is  doubtless  per- 
manently present  to  me ;  but  as  the  stars  in  daylight, 
quantitatively  annihilated.  What  vividness  and  defi- 
niteness  I  now  seem  to  possess  comes,  we  must  still  think, 
chiefly  through  this  flood  of  sense  which  irrupts  upon 
my  anticipative  out-goings.  Cut  me  off  in  earnest  from 
my  experience  of  Nature,  and  I  tend  to  become  vague, 
indefinite,  uncertain  of  myself.  Let  me  lose  a  little  in 
sight  or  hearing ;  and  I  find  how  much  not  only  self 
but  sense  has  been  concerned  in  that  influx.  However 
vigorous  the  impetus  of  advance-weaving  on  the  part 
of  my  ideas  —  vigorous  enough  at  times  to  falsify 
experience,  displacing  feebler  sensation  —  my  own  activ- 
ity always  accepts  the  irruptive  material  as  its  own 
authority  and  completion.  Toward  that  Outer  Reality 
I  hold  myself  as  toward  that  which  sustains  me  from 
moment  to  moment  in  my  present  being. 

Is  not  that  outer  activity  then  essentially  creative  in  its 
constant  action  (as  probably  also  in  its  original  action) 
— creative  of  me?  My  dependence  upon  Nature,  my 
momentary  submission  to  its  independent,  obstinate, 
objective  decision  of  what  Fact  and  Truth  shall  be,  both 
in  principle  and  in  detail :  —  is  not  this  a  finding  of  my 


OUR  NATURAL  REALISM  287 

own  mind?  It  is  here,  in  this  momentary  (as  well  as 
permanent)  creation  of  my  Self  that  I  begin,  I  say,  to 
find  Nature  taking  on  the  aspect  of  an  Other  Mind. 

For  if  the  full-fledged  otherness  of  that  which  is 
thus  over  against  me  cannot  be  doubted,  neither  can 
it  be  doubted  that  this  which  so  immediately  becomes 
Self,  makes  Self,  is  already  a  Self  even  in  its  other- 
ness, —  namely,  an  Other  Self.  We  find  the  weakness 
of  natural  Realism  when  we  consider  whether  a  physi- 
cal experience  so  organically  and  actively  concerned  in 
mind-existence  and  mind-process  could  exist  also,  and 
fully  itself,  apart  from  such  active  relations.  If  only 
I  were  independent  of  Nature,  I  might  think  Nature 
independent  of  Self.  But  since  Nature  obstinate  is 
Nature  creative,  and  creative  of  mind ;  since  my  deep- 
est roots  and  those  of  all  co-experiencing  mind  are  in 
her  deepest  objectivity,  I  cannot  clear  Nature  of  self- 
hood, though  I  can  well  clear  her  of  my  own  self  or  of 
any  other  particular  self. 

Space,  here,  is  my  space,  —  also  everybody's  space  ; 
and  is  known  as  such.  Energy  is  everybody's  energy : 
Nature  as  a  whole  is  everybody's  Nature.  Even  now, 
space,  and  the  rest,  are  integral  parts  of  everybody's 
mind  —  are  idea  and  experience  at  the  same  time;  are 
the  activity  of  each  finite  thinker,  —  but  an  activity 
held  empirically  in  place  by  the  active  decisiveness  of 
Outer  Reality.  You  and  I  vanish,  and  leave  space 
behind — leave  thereby  so  much  of  our  mind  behind, 
and  more.  Leave  behind  necessary  elements  in  our  con- 
tinuity, individuality,  unity,  even  character.  Leave  them 
behind  in  what  condition  ?  In  the  same  condition  in 
which  we  have  always  known  them:  as  something  com- 


288  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

municated  by  an  Other  Mind,  and  meant  by  an  Other 
Mind.  For  in  immediately  experiencing  my  Self  as 
limited  and  determined  (in  the  ways  described)  by  an 
Absolute  Other,  I  am  experiencing  that  Other  as  Other 
Mind.  As  space  is  found  limited  by  no  other  than 
more  space,  so  Self  is  found  limited  and  individualized 
by  no  other  than  Other  Selfhood. 

This  is  our  fundamental  social  experience.  And  I 
wish  to  make  it  clear  that  this  experience  is  not  an 
inference,  but  an  immediate  experience.  As  simply  as 
Nature  presents  itself  as  objective,  just  so  simply  and 
directly  is  the  Other  Mind  present  to  me  in  that  objec- 
tivity, as  its  actual  meaning.  I  do  not  first  know  my 
physical  world  as  a  world  of  objects  and  then  as  a  world 
of  shared  objects :  it  is  through  a  prior  recognition  of 
the  presence  of  Other  Mind  that  my  physical  experience 
acquires  objectivity  at  all.1  The  objectivity  of  Nature 

1  Nothing  is  gained  in  differentiating  physical  objects  from  psychical 
objects  by  pointing  out  (as  is  commonly  attempted)  that  the  psychical  objects 
are  for  one  only,  whereas  the  physical  objects  are  also  objects  for  another. 
This  simply  doubles  the  mystery.  I  have  now  to  understand  how  these 
physical  things  can  be  objects  for  both  of  us  at  once,  obstinate  to  both  of 
us,  and  not  to  one  only:  the  nature  of  objectivity  itself  with  its  capacity 
of  being  equally  objective  to  two  souls,  or  even  to  an  infinite  number,  is 
not  in  the  least  illumined.  There  is  rather  the  additional  mystery  how  I 
know  (as  it  seems  I  do  immediately  know  by  considering  the  physical 
object  alone)  that  it  can  be  objective  to  others  as  well  as  to  myself.  Are 
these  objects,  then,  labelled  "  common,"  while  the  others  are  without  such 
labels  ?  have  they  about  them  some  physical  mark  which  points  the  mind 
to  an  other  knower?  Hardly  this.  The  only  way  in  which  I  can  know  an 
object  to  be  common  is  by  catching  it  in  the  act  of  being  common,  that 
is,  by  knowing  it  as  known  by  other  mind.  The  social  experience  must 
have  a  prior  and  original  recognizableness.  And  this  recognition  of  other 
mind  than  my  own  is  a  simultaneous  recognition  of  those  aspects  of  expe- 
rience which  such  mind  needs  for  the  maintenance  of  its  intercourse  with 
me,  without  loss  of  its  own  separateness  of  career. 


OUR  NATURAL  REALISM  289 

is  its  community,  not  two  facts  but  one :  but  the  whole 
truth  of  this  one  fact  (which  whole  I  do  not  see  unless 
I  note  what  I  am  thinking  with)  —  the  whole  of  this 
fact  is  community. 

Here  then  is  the  point  in  which  natural  Realism  is  both 
right  and  wrong.  That  which  limits  and  opposes  the 
Self,  setting  bounds  to  our  expectations,  offering  instead 
of  our  desire  its  /  am,  is  indeed  Not-self.  That  outer 
individuality  is  first  —  our  own  follows.  That  outer 
world  asserts  itself  upon  me,  and  creates  me;  even  my 
"forms  of  apperception,"  my  space,  my  time,  I  accept 
from  it  and  reissue  —  even  here  I  am  empirical  first  and 
creative  afterward.  In  so  far  natural  Realism  is  right. 
But  it  is  just  because  the  empirical  factors  of  expe- 
rience extend  thus  through  my  whole  selfhood  that  this 
Not-myself  is  known  in  positive  terms  as  Other-self. 

In  failing  to  penetrate  through  the  blank  otherness 
of  Nature  to  the  spirit  that  is  its  support,  natural  Real- 
ism falls  short  of  the  truth.1  Idealism  corrects  this 


1  In  the  physical  experience  of  outer  reality  Kant  descried  the  point  at 
which  subjective  idealism  is  broken  :  in  Wahrnehmung  (physical  percep- 
tion) he  found  the  active  effect  of  the  unknown  Thing-in-itself.  At  this 
point  he  thought  that  experience  reaches  an  unusual  pitch  of  outwardness 
—  reaching,  indeed,  beyond  the  Self,  achieving  the  impossible.  What  is 
the  evidence  of  this  feat  ?  It  is  that  the  self  here  discovers  itself  in 
process  of  being  made  ;  finds  the  source  of  those  individual  characters  of 
itself,  which  since  they  define  itself  cannot  be  from  itself.  But  Kant  did 
not  note  that  in  thus  viewing  itself  as  a  particular  Self,  the  Ego  is  accom- 
plishing the  standpoint  of  another  (and  universal)  Self  ;  and  that  this 
standpoint  is  a  permanent  part  of  its  own  being.  Hence  he  misread  the 
relation  between  the  active  non-ego  and  the  ego  in  the  process  of  physical 
experience.  For  causality  (on  his  own  showing)  it  is  not ;  but  communication 
it  may  well  be,  —  and  self-communication,  which  is  creation. 

For  more  explicit  discussion  of  this  matter,  see  the  explanatory  essay, 
"The  Knowledge  of  Independent  Reality." 


290  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

error ;  and  in  correcting  this  error,  falls  as  a  rule  into 
another — it  refers  the  experience  of  nature  to  a  spirit> 
which  turns  out  to  be  only  the  solitary  finite  self.  The 
logic  even  of  *  absolute  idealism '  usually  fails  here,  as 
Professor  Howison  has  well  shown.1  The  corrective  of 
both  this  natural  realism  and  this  solitary  idealism  must 
be  found,  not  by  changing  the  venue  of  the  question  to 
the  moral  consciousness,  but  by  an  appeal  from  natural 
realism  to  a  realism  of  social  experience. 

If,  then,  I  wish  in  simplest  fashion  to  find  my  f unda* 
mental  social  experience,  let  me  consider  that  feature 
of  experience  which  I  call  the  independence,  or  objec- 
tivity, of  the  physical  world  about  me.  Let  me  consider 
that  until  it  is  disabused  of  its  finality,  and  seen  to  be 
open  to  challenge;  let  me  consider  it  until  I  see  that  in 
this  knowledge  (that  the  objectivity  there  has  a  further 
account  to  give)  I  am  already  in  present  experience  of 
that  Other  Mind  which  in  Nature  communicates  itself 
to  me.  The  only  way  to  a  realism  of  social  experience 
is  through  a  Non-realism  in  regard  to  the  surface  of 
Nature.  What  we  reach  is  a  super-natural  Realism,  or 
a  Social  Realism,  or  more  truly  a  Realism  of  the  Abso- 
lute —  not  far  removed  from  Absolute  Idealism. 

1  The  Conception  of  God,   Royce,  Le  Conte,  Howison,  Mezes,  page 
104,  etc. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  GOD  OF  NATURE  AND  THE  KNOWLEDGE 
OF  MAN 

BUT  finally,  who  and  what  is  this  Subject,  to  which 
we  have  been  referring  in  such  vague  terms  as  the 
Other,  the  fundamental  social  object  ? 

It  cannot  be  identified  with  any  particular  other  per- 
sonality such  as  these  with  whom  I  enter  into  conver- 
sation and  reach  various  stages  of  acquaintance  and 
concrete  intercourse.  For  I  recognize  them  as  being 
co-dependent  with  me  upon  this  same  Other  Mind 
revealed  in  Nature.  In  this  intercourse  with  them  there 
are  beginnings  and  endings ;  and  the  entrance  of  any 
one  of  them  into  my  life  is  relatively  speaking  an  acci- 
dent, making  unquestionable  historical  difference  in 
that  general  fund  of  idea  with  which  I  regard  Nature, 
but  not  determining  the  character  of  any  fact  of  Nature 
such  as  he  and  I  might  be  called  upon  to  give  common 
witness  to. 

Further,  my  knowledge  of  any  such  individual  per- 
son is  uncertain,  with  varying  grades  of  uncertainty. 
I  am  liable  to  mistake  at  many  points  in  interpreting 
his  thoughts  and  experiences ;  I  may  be  mistaken  in  his 
identity ;  I  may  even  be  mistaken  in  judgment  whether 
a  conscious  subject  is  there  —  whether  any  given  phys- 
ical object  is  a  body  to  an  Other  Mind.  I  never  know 
how  much  of  my  physical  world  is  at  any  time  officiat- 


292  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

ing  as  body,  and  how  much  is  only  environment.  1 
have  no  absolute  assurance  of  these  minds  severally. 
It  is  true  that  on  occasion  I  may  be  surer  of  the  reality 
of  a  given  fellow  man  than  I  am  of  my  own  :  I  may 
call  upon  my  friend  to  assure  me  of  my  own  sanity,  by 
acknowledging  as  real  for  him  also  an  object  of  mine 
which  I  fear  may  be  an  hallucination.  But  I  am  more 
likely  to  judge  his  sanity  by  his  assent  to  the  reality  of 
objects  which  apart  from  him  I  regard  as  unquestionably 
real.  I  am  not  sure  of  these  fellow  minds  severally. 

But  the  doubts  to  which  my  experience  of  individual 
persons  is  liable  must  diminish  when  I  consider  them  not 
separately  but  together.  The  reality  which  I  can  ques- 
tion in  the  detached  person  becomes  substantial  in  groups 
of  persons,  in  my  total  historical  context,  in  collective 
humanity.  The  uncertainty  which  holds  against  any 
one,  can  hardly  hold  against  the  whole.  May  not  this 
fundamental  Other  Mind  of  which  we  are  in  search  be 
simply  my  total  world  of  Others  in  its  collective  bearing 
upon  me? 

Such  a  world  of  other  spirits  does  not  come  and  go  ; 
it  was  before  me,  and  shall  be  after  me.  Out  of  such 
fellow  beings  and  the  world  which  they  have  built  up, 
I  come ;  my  creation  is  theirs  ;  and  to  such,  having 
myself  shared  in  creation,  I  hand  on  the  same  world  to 
be  perpetuated  as  humanity's  world.  Might  not  Nature 
itself  be  conceived  as  an  expression  of  the  common 
will  of  such  an  over-individual  or  composite  entity  ? 
Through  this  physical  community  our  developing  inter- 
course is  built  up  ;  through  it,  humanity  persists  in  its 
own  being,  and  communicates  being,  from  generation  to 
generation.  Is  it  not  this  common  will  of  mankind,  or 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD  AND  OF  MAN  293 

of   collective   spirit  generally,  of   which   in   Nature  I 
become  aware  ? 

There  are  not  wanting  observable  facts  of  our  social 
consciousness  which  support  such  a  conjecture.  Fre- 
quent intercourse  with  fellow  men  does  much  to  deter- 
mine the  stability  of  physical  experience  in  comparison 
with  the  world  of  imagination.  The  hermit,  the  lonely 
sheep-driver,  is  likely  to  succumb  to  his  illusions,  living 
with  them  in  preference  to  the  world  which  we  of  the 
majority  call  real. 

The  explorer,  the  polar  traveller,  the  man  in  solitary 
confinement,  find  the  feeling  of  unreality  a  more  com- 
mon visitor  than  we  do  and  threatening  to  become  a 
permanent  companion.  The  "  established  character  " 
of  Nature  is  sharpest  where  men  are  thickest,  is  clearly 
some  function  of  the  volume  of  our  empirical  conver- 
sation :  it  gives  the  impression  of  being  a  consensus 
effect. 

But  there  are  several  reasons  why  we  cannot  accept 
this  theory  of  the  Other.  One  is  that  any  such  consen- 
sus implies  a  prior  unity  ;  we  communicate  because  we 
are  already  one,  —  a  proposition  which  is  as  valid  for  an 
indefinite  number  of  communicators  as  it  is  for  any  two, 
and  as  valid  for  present  humanity  and  past  humanity 
as  for  any  two  contemporaries.  The  entire  individual- 
ity and  permanence  of  Nature  implies  a  corresponding 
individual  permanence  in  the  Subject  whose  commun- 
icated being  this  Nature  is.  Upon  such  ultimate  unity 
of  substance  the  unity  of  each  finite  self  is  based. 

Further,  that  is  no  genuine  social  experience  which 
is  not  known  as  such  by  the  participants.  Two  beings, 


294  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

we  have  said,  can  come  into  communication  only  if  they 
already  have  some  point  in  common:  but  if  the  beings 
are  conscious  beings,  and  their  communication  is  to  be 
conscious  communication,  we  may  specify  our  proposi- 
tion thus,  That  two  conscious  beings  can  communicate 
only  if  they  already  have  some  known  point  in  common, 
some  object  known  by  each  as  object  to  both.  If  I 
have  any  genuine  social  experience  at  all,  then  at  some 
point  I  do  actually  know  the  Other  Mind  in  its  know- 
ing —  beyond  any  doubt  or  shifting  of  identity ;  beyond 
any  possibility  of  error  in  the  intentional  character  of 
the  experience — that  is,  in  the  address  of  the  communi- 
cation to  me.  This  seems  a  great  deal  to  claim  of  the 
experience  of  Other  Mind  in  Nature ;  but  I  cannot 
escape  these  conclusions.  And  I  see  clearly  that  there 
is  in  no  assembly  of  fellow  minds  any  conscious  reference 
of  Nature  to  me;  as  I  see  that  I  have  no  conscious  part 
in  presenting  my  world  of  objects  to  them.  It  is  use- 
less to  appeal  to  subconscious  activity,  for  an  activity 
that  is  unintended  is  not  my  own. 

In  short,  we  are  all,  whether  singly  or  collectively, 
empirical  knowers  of  Nature.  But  if  there  are  none 
but  empirical  knowers  in  the  world  there  is  no  social 
experience.  I  am  only  in  presence  of  an  Other  Mind 
when  I  have  pressed  through  the  region  of  my  passiv- 
ity, and  turning  its  corner,  have  come  upon  that  which 
is  there  actively  and  intentionally  creating  me. 

Even  were  there,  in  addition  to  all  visible  passive 
knowers  in  the  world,  one  all-comprehensive  passive 
knower,  we  should  be  no  nearer  a  conscious  unity.  For 
unless  he  too  could  pierce  the  obstinacy  and  self-asser- 
tiveness  of  the  world  confronting  him,  he  would  still  be, 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD   AND   OF  MAN  295 

so  far  as  his  consciousness  is  concerned,  a  self-enclosed 
being,  and  would  be  obliged  as  we  are  to  work  through 
the  problem  of  that  dependence  to  a  knowledge  of  that 
Other  on  which  he  depends.  There  is  no  sociality  for 
any  knower,  so  we  now  discover,  until  the  objectivity  of 
Nature  wins  its  further  meaning,  and  is  found  as  an 
intentional  communication  of  a  Self  wholly  active. 

It  may  be  that  the  more  we  press  the  conclusions  of 
our  position,  the  less  we  shall  be  able  to  recognize  in 
any  concrete  characters  of  our  own  experience,  the  ex- 
perience here  described.  We  have  made  all  social  experi- 
ence depend  upon  a  conscious  knowledge  in  experience 
of  a  being,  who  in  scope  and  power  might  well  be  identi- 
fied with  God.  We  have  been  led  by  the  successive  re- 
quirements of  our  logic  to  the  position  that  our  first  and 
fundamental  social  experience  is  an  experience  of  God. 
Where  in  our  continuous  current  consciousness  do  we 
recognize  any  such  element  as  this  ? 

Conspicuous  in  experience  such  knowledge  certainly 
is  not ;  and  as  permanent  knowledge,  with  which  we 
forever  begin,  and  with  which  we  forever  think  our 
world,  we  shall  not  expect  it  to  be  conspicuous.  It  will 
be  present  for  the  most  part  in  no  other  form  than  as 
the  abiding  sense  of  what  stability  and  certainty  we 
have,  as  we  move  about  among  men  and  things ;  it  will 
be  present  for  the  most  part  just  as  our  own  force  of 
self-assertion  and  self-confidence  is  present,  that  force 
by  which  we  individually  will  "  to  maintain  ourselves 
in  being  "  in  a  world  known,  by  what  assurance  we  do 
not  ordinarily  enquire,  to  be  no  hostile,  nor  ultimately 
alien,  thing.  It  will  be  present  chiefly  in  my  persistent 


296  HOW  MEN   KNOW  GOD 

sense  of  reality  in  that  with  which  I  am  dealing,  and 
in  those  fellow  minds  with  whom  I  converse.  It  will 
be  present  in  that  sense  of  reality  also  in  its  active 
aspect ;  in  my  own  degree  of  what  we  have  called 
"  objectivity  of  mind/'  my  disposition  to  take  experi- 
ence with  full  empirical  openness,  breast-forwardly,  ori- 
ented by  the  universal  or  common  eye  which  the  fun- 
damental God-consciousness  gives  me.  In  whatever  rigid 
scientific  acceptance  of  fact  I  may  accomplish,  I  detect 
the  degree  of  this  experience.  And  whatever  conscious- 
ness I  may  have  of  responsibility  and  dependence  are 
workings  of  the  same  thing :  if  I  am  conscious  of  obliga- 
tion closely  conjoined  with  the  simple  fact  of  my  exist- 
ence ;  if  I  know  that  what  creativity  I  have  and  must 
have  is  built  upon  a  continuous  docility;  in  thus  know- 
ing I  am  conscious  though  but  indistinctly  of  my 
Absolute  Other. 

Inseparable  from  self-consciousness  is  this  experience, 
and  discernible  in  all  the  dimensions  and  assertions  of 
self-consciousness.  God  is  known  as  that  of  which  I 
am  primarily  certain  ;  and  being  certain,  am  certain  of 
self  and  of  my  world  of  men  and  men's  objects.  I 
shall  always  be  more  certain  that  God  is,  than  what 
he  is :  it  is  the  age-long  problem  of  religion  to  bring  to 
light  the  deeper  characters  of  this  fundamental  expe- 
rience. But  the  starting  point  of  this  development 
(which  we  shall  have  occasion  to  trace  in  some  rough 
way)  is  no  mere  That  Which,  without  predicates.  Sub- 
stance is  known  as  Subject :  reality  from  the  beginning 
is  known  as  God.  The  idea  of  God  is  not  an  attribute 
which  in  the  course  of  experience  I  come  to  attach  to 
my  original  whole-idea :  the  unity  of  my  world  which 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD  AND  OF  MAN  297 

makes  it  from  the  beginning  a  whole,  knowable  in  sim- 
plicity, is  the  unity  of  other  Selfhood. 

God  then  is  immediately  known,  and  permanently 
known,  as  the  Other  Mind  which  in  creating  Nature 
is  also  creating  me.  Of  this  knowledge  nothing  can 
despoil  us ;  this  knowledge  has  never  been  wanting  to 
the  self -knowing  mind  of  man. 

Given  this  original  certainty  in  social  experience,  the 
uncertainty  and  experimentation  in  the  knowledge  of 
Other  Minds  generally  can  be  faced  with  some  confi- 
dence ;  no  failures  here  can  require  a  "  retreat  into  the 
subject " ;  I  can  never  whether  by  the  logic  of  my  own 
defective  social  practice  or  reflection  be  shut  in  to  myself 
alone,  a  monad  without  windows.  But  how  do  I  find 
my  fellow  men  at  all  ?  I  have  God  ;  them  I  have  not. 

I  answer  that  here  those  criteria  of  the  presence  of 
other  minds  which  at  first  we  thought  could  not  give 
us  what  we  required,  because  they  presupposed  the  idea 
of  an  Other  Mind,  now  have  conferred  on  them  the 
breath  of  life.  The  idea  is  in  our  possession  ;  with  this 
key  all  metaphors  of  mind  and  mind-relations  in 
Nature  become  a  living  language.  I  am  in  possession  of 
the  net  which  being  hung  out  in  experience  will  gather 
in  what  "supplementation  of  my  own  fragmentary 
meanings,"  what  response  to  my  questions,  may  be  dis- 
coverable there.  I  have  what  Fichte  calls  the  concept 
of  a  concept  in  its  outward  appearance.  My  current 
social  experience,  the  finding  of  any  fellow  finite  mind, 
is  an  application  of  my  prior  idea  of  an  Other;  in  a 
sense,  an  application  of  my  idea  of  God.  It  is  through 
the  knowledge  of  God  that  I  am  able  to  know  men; 


298  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

not  first  through  the  knowledge  of  men  that  I  am  able 
to  know  or  imagine  God. 

And  further,  in  them  I  find  something  which  I 
require  in  order  to  make  that  consciousness  of  companion- 
ship wholly  actual  to  me.  I  have  some  need  to  repro- 
duce the  relation  to  God  in  a  visible  relationship  within 
God's  world.  Why  I  must  try  to  make  that  central 
companionship  more  tangible  and  physical  I  do  not  here 
enquire ;  but  in  that  need,  whatever  it  is,  I  may  find  an 
inkling  of  God's  own  motive  in  creating  just  such  a 
sphere  of  things  as  this  visible  Nature-field,  in  which 
spirits  wander  as  shapes  embedded. 

Nor  is  this  applying  of  the  God-idea  to  these  shapes 
wholly  unliteral.  For  God  is  not  apart  from  what  he 
has  created.  We  have  found  God  only  in  the  relation 
of  otherness  and  objectivity.  God  is  other-than-me ; 
also  other-than-my-fellow-Others.  We  have  deliberately 
dwelt  upon  the  absolute  objectivity  of  God ;  or  rather, 
have  chosen  to  come  to  the  recognition  of  God  in  the 
absolute  object  of  knowledge.  But  we  have  not  been 
unmindful  of  the  truth  that  Self  includes,  and  is  with, 
its  objects,  in  so  far  as  it  comprehends  them,  or  is  cre- 
ating them.  God,  then,  does  actually  include  me,  in  so 
far  as  I  am  dependent  upon  him ;  does  likewise  include 
those  fellow  Others,  in  so  far  as  they  also  are  his 
created  work. 

Nature  is  not,  as  I  experience  it,  a  consensus  effect, 
due  to  the  wills  of  my  fellow  finite  spirits,  conscious  or 
sub-conscious:  but  I  dare  not  say  that  their  presence 
has  no  part  in  making  Nature  what  it  is,  even  to  my 
experience.  For  Nature,  we  may  say,  is  the  region 
where  this  system  of  minds  does  actually  coalesce. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD  AND  OF  MAN  299 

Space  does  not  reside  in  me,  nor  in  any  mind ;  but  in 
all  minds  at  once.  In  space  and  time  and  their  contents 
we  have  not  merely  common  objects,  we  have  a  region 
of  literal  common  Mind.  It  is  not  that  we  are  each 
so  constructed  after  a  common  pattern  called  Human 
Nature,  with  certain  a  priori  ideas  or  forms  of  arrang- 
ing experience,  that  given  certain  stimuli  at  our  nerve 
ends  we  all  do,  as  a  fact,  turn  out  the  same  world,  each 
in  his  own  private  copy.  I  do  not  in  my  growth  make 
up  a  new  space  and  a  new  causal  system  for  myself. 
I  adopt  them.  Space  and  Nature  are  numerically  one, 
and  I  by  my  community  with  Other  Mind,  am  born 
inheritor  of  that  one  identical  object.  In  my  experience 
of  Space  and  Nature  I  am  experiencing  identically  all 
that  Other  Mind  which  is  contemplating  that  same 
object;  in  so  far,  I  have  an  infallible  element  in  my 
knowledge  of  my  finite  comrades,  as  well  as  in  my 
knowledge  of  God. 

Existence  of  conscious  beings  begins,  then,  if  we  are 
right,  with  intimate  sociality  and  dependence ;  growth 
gives  to  each  conscious  being  powers  of  independent 
world-building  and  creativity  generally.  This  present 
existence,  we  say,  is  an  apprenticeship  in  creativity. 
At  the  same  time  (and  as  part  of  the  same  fact)  we 
acquire  the  power  of  solitude,  jutting  out  into  the  alone 
—  alone  perhaps  even  with  reference  to  God.  Such  a 
monism  as  this  of  ours  is  rather  more  favorable  to  per- 
sonal freedom  and  enterprise  than  such  pluralisms  as 
have  usually  been  defined.  For  we  do  not  begin  as  sol- 
itary beings  and  then  acquire  community  :  we  begin 
as  social  products,  and  acquire  the  arts  of  solitude  — 


300  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

a  direction  of  progress  more  hopeful  for  variety  and 
origination  than  a  progress  in  the  reverse  direction. 

In  applying  the  name  of  God  to  the  Other  Mind  which 
in  sustaining  physical  experience  does  continually  create 
and  communicate  itself  to  us,  we  have  gone  indeed 
beyond  our  warrant.  We  have  not  here  the  concep- 
tion of  God  in  its  fulness.  But  we  have  its  ground- 
work. We  have  what  must  justify  the  animism  of  our 
ancestors, — the  inevitable  animism  of  all  mankind; 
for  the  finding  of  spirit  in  Nature  is  but  the  finding 
of  the  truth  as  continuously  experienced. 

If  the  difficult  problem,  what  parts  of  Nature  are  to 
be  regarded  as  body  of  Spirit,  and  what  only  as  envi- 
ronment, is  not  early  solved ;  if  the  idea  of  Other  Mind 
at  first  is  applied  too  indiscriminately ;  that  is  all  such 
work  as  experience  may  well  take  time  to  perfect. 
Nature,  we  find,  is  the  mediator  of  God,  par  excellence. 
As  for  our  fellow  beings,  they  are  first  vessels,  recipi- 
ent of  the  meaning  already  established  ;  and  then  sec- 
ondarily mediators,  as  through  them  the  idea  of  God 
receives  further  definition  and  content.  Meager  as  the 
glimpse  of  Deity  may  be  which  is  opened  through  the 
humble  channel  of  the  experience  of  physical  Nature, 
even  through  sensation,  it  is  sufficient  to  initiate  that 
long  course  of  the  knowledge  of  God  in  which  mankind 
has  found  its  highest  ambition.  But  before  glancing  at 
the  outline  of  that  growing  knowledge  I  shall  ask  in 
the  next  chapter  to  dwell  still  longer  among  these  severe 
questions  of  truth  and  experience,  enquiring  by  what 
other  ways  men  have  tried  to  secure  conscious  certainty 
of  the  existence  (if  not  of  the  presence)  of  their  God. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE    ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  FOR  THE 
EXISTENCE    OF  GOD 

IN  our  search  for  other  Mind  we  came  upon  the 
experience  of  God,  as  by  surprise.  We  were  looking 
for  man,  and  we  found  God.  We  discovered  that  our 
fellow  Mind  can  not  be  touched,  except  through  first 
touching  God ;  that  the  one  point  in  which  we  do  break 
through  to  unmistakable  knowledge  of  spirit  not  our- 
self  is  here,  in  the  presence  to  experience  of  the  Abso- 
lute as  Other  Mind.  Which,  one  point  being  given, 
ah1  the  rest  of  social  experience  with  its  endless  experi- 
mentation, trial,  error,  and  infinite  acquired  skill,  can 
follow. 

We  have  first  found  God  as  a  God  of  physical  Nature, 
a  God  through  Nature  creating  ourselves.  And  herein 
lies  that  literalness  of  the  God-idea  which  we  have 
thought  necessary  for  religion.  For  Nature  is  the 
home  of  literalness.  To  be  literal  means  to  be  real 
in  the  same  definite  and  particular  fashion  that  we  sur- 
mise in  sensation,  and  realize  in  the  precise  work  of 
physical  science.  Sensation  embodies  for  us  much  of 
what  we  conceive  all  reality  ought  to  be  in  definiteness 
and  vivid  individuality.  Nature  has  its  decisive  yea 
or  nay  for  every  question  that  can  be  put  to  it.  We 
would  not  lose  these  qualities  from  our  religious  con- 
sciousness. And  we  do  not  lose  them  if  we  can  inter- 


302  HOW  MEN  KNOW   GOD 

pret  the  whole  individuality  of  Nature  as  one  with  the 
individuality  of  God  in  its  communicated  form. 

Doubtless  we  feel  in  this  conception  at  once  the  de- 
fects of  literalness  also,  —  a  certain  obnoxious  and  hum- 
drum levelling  of  religion  to  the  status  of  fact.  This 
is  a  fault  of  emphasis :  it  is  the  literal  that  has  been 
by  necessity  uppermost  in  our  discussion,  but  literalness, 
of  course,  does  not  tell  the  whole  story  of  any  spirit's 
existence.  It  is  merely  an  attribute  which,  among  the 
rest,  we  should  sorely  miss  if  it  were  absent.  It  is  not 
customary,  I  know,  to  seek  for  God  at  the  level  of  sen- 
sation :  that  is  one  reason  why  it  has  seemed  to  me 
important  to  have  found  him  there.  Sensation  may 
supply,  as  it  were,  a  missing  dimension  to  our  thought 
of  God.  God  must  now  be  to  us  not  less  real  and 
present  than  Nature,  not  less  definitively  here  and 
now  than  these  impressive  objective  Facts. 

We  have  no  reason  to  think  slightingly  of  sensation, 
or  to  refer  to  it  as  the  lowest  level  of  our  being.  It 
marks,  in  many  ways,  the  line  of  our  limitation ; 
line  of  our  passivity  and  dependence;  line  oftentimes 
of  intellectual  and  moral  defeat ;  a  region  which  self 
and  idea  fail  to  penetrate;  but  by  that  same  sign 
containing  the  soil  and  air  of  the  future.  The  line 
of  our  limitation  may  be,  if  we  will,  the  line  where 
we  meet  God.  Where  should  we  more  expect  to  meet 
him? 

We  have  not  been  expressly  undertaking  a  proof  of 
the  existence  of  God.  But  in  finding  God  as  a  neces- 
sary object  of  experience,  have  we  not,  in  a  way  suffi- 
cient and  decisive,  proved  his  existence?  What  other 


THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  303 

final  proof  can  we  have  that  any  being  exists  than  to 
find,  or  demonstrate,  that  Being  in  experience?  For 
my  power  of  recognizing  existence  is  summed  up  in 
the  word  experience. 

Still,  this  again  has  not  been  the  usual  procedure  of 
those  who  have  tried  to  reach  conscious  assurance  that 
there  is  a  God.  Proving  God  has  usually  meant  rea- 
soning away  to  God,  by  making  speculative  connections 
between  the  world  that  now  is  and  its  unseen  author  or 
destiny.  And  if  we  believe  with  Kant,  and  with  many 
another,  that  God  is  not  to  be  found  in  experience,  there 
are  none  but  such  speculative  connections  to  be  made. 
We  have  thought,  however,  that  experience  is  essen- 
tially metaphysical,  —  the  place  in  which  we  meet  Real- 
ity; in  experience  we  are  "taught,"  our  errors  are 
corrected,  our  true  ideas  confirmed,  by  what  else  than 
by  Reality  ?  In  common  action  we  are  dealing  with  the 
passing,  —  and  with  the  Absolute :  and  it  is  for  us 
to  recognize  that  Absolute  as  Spirit.  The  course  of 
discovery  which  leads  to  that  recognition — this  will  be 
our  interpretation  of  the  process  of  "proof  "  of  God's 
existence. 

Such  proof  is  but  a  clearing  of  the  mind,  so  that 
experience  may  be  recognized  for  what  it  is:  it  is  a 
banishing  of  illusions,  a  consideration  of  what  we  may 
expect  to  find,  and  could  wish  to  find ;  and  a  noting 
that  this  wish  of  ours  corresponds  to  experience  as  we 
have  it.  Proof,  in  this  sense,  does  but  follow  the  route 
of  prayer,  —  which  also  is  a  "  lifting  of  the  mind  to 
God  " ;  not  in  any  sense  equivalent  to  prayer,  but  mak- 
ing evident  that  filament  of  wholly  objective  relatedness 
between  man  and  God  which  (as  a  minimal  core  of  com- 


304  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

munity)  must  lie  at  the  center  of  all  ventures  toward 
further  and  moral  relationship. 

What  such  proof  assumes  is  simply  that  God  and 
the  world  do  stand  in  permanent  organic  relationship, 
and  that  the  traces  of  this  relationship  cannot  be  lack- 
ing in  experience.  Proof,  in  this  sense,  is  a  necessary 
concern  of  religion ;  whose  function  is  to  make  the  way 
to  God  plain  to  all  men,  to  escape  from  the  accidental 
and  the  fortuitous,  to  establish  universal  and  conscious 
intercourse  between  the  human  and  the  divine.  Proof 
in  set  terms  has  never  been  the  work  of  religion ;  for 
religion  knows  how  to  convey  proof,  or  demonstration,  in 
the  form  of  deeds.  Religion  practically  and  personally 
points  men  to  God ;  let  philosophy  give  men  the  con- 
scious possession  and  certainty  of  this  which  religion 
has  in  deed  established.  The  proof  of  God,  we  may 
say,  is  the  good  faith  of  man  with  regard  to  religion. 
It  is  not  a  thing  with  which  religion  can  dispense ;  nor 
has  religion  ever  been  willing  to  forgo  it. 

If  proof,  then,  is  the  finding  of  the  way  to  God  from 
•where  one  at  any  time  consciously  stands,  the  proofs 
may  be  as  many  as  the  standpoints  are  many.  But  in 
so  far  as  we  can  describe  in  general  terms  the  conscious 
situation  of  all  men,  there  is  but  one  way  to  God,  and 
one  proof.  We  shall  attempt  to  make  clear  in  this 
chapter  the  nature  of  that  proof  in  the  barest  possible 
sketch,  — and  after  all  is  there  not  some  keen  and  pro- 
per satisfaction  in  the  utmost  bareness  of  statement, 
when  a  truth  has  once  been  grasped  as  truth  ? 

Nature  appears  to  men  as  their  most  general  bond 
of  community.  Nature  also  appears  as  existence  par 


THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  306 

excellence.  When  we  lose  sight  of  God,  Nature  becomes 
our  standard  of  reality.  If  we  have  a  God  we  should 
like  to  make  his  existence  as  sure  as  that !  Hence  it  is 
that  most  attempts  at  proof  of  God  have  begun  with 
Nature,  and  have  tried  to  make  his  existence  secure  by 
showing  him  in  some  valid  connection  with  this  world, 
such  as  that  of  cause  to  the  world  as  effect.  God  as 
cause  of  the  world  would  be  real  even  as  the  world  is 
real.  The  so-called  cosmological  argument  follows  this 
line  of  connection,  and  finds  that  the  world  has  a  single 
conscious  cause,  itself  uncaused,  who  is  God. 

If  we  wish  to  be  assured  that  this  cause  is  not  only  a 
voluntary  cause  but  a  benevolent  one  as  well,  we  make 
a  premise  of  the  good  which  as  experienced  in  the 
world  is  our  natural  type  of  goodness;  and  we  find  that 
the  intender  of  this  is  good  even  as  the  result  is  good. 

But  by  these  means  we  do  not  find  God.  If  we 
could  prove  a  first  and  conscious  cause,  still  we  could 
prove  only  such  cause  as  is  equivalent  to  his  effect ;  we 
could  prove  only  such  goodness  as  is  equivalent  to  this 
mixture  of  goodness  and  evil  that  we  here  find.  A  very 
limited  Being  would  this  be,  a  God  who  is  only  as  great 
as  his  world,  only  as  good,  and  finally  only  as  real. 

By  such  ways  we  can  only  reach  a  being  in  whom  the 
qualities  of  experience  are  refunded,  without  change  or 
heightening.  But  in  such  case,  we  may  as  well  believe 
in  the  world  as  we  find  it ;  and  proceed  with  our  work 
of  mastering  it,  without  reference  to  God. 

Such  proofs  are  not  wholly  true  to  the  spirit  of  reli- 
gion ;  for  historically  men  have  lifted  their  minds  to  God 
rather  because  the  world  is  unsatisfactory,  than  because 
it  satisfies.  We  wish  a  God  who  is  greater  than  the 


306  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

world,  also  better  than  the  world  as  found,  and  also 
more  real. 

And  such  more  perfect  being  is  what  these  proofs  have 
in  spirit  sought :  for  in  referring  the  world  to  a  conscious 
Will,  they  have  meant  to  imply  that  Will  is  greater  than 
Nature ;  and  in  making  the  world  dependent  upon  a  di- 
vine Purpose  they  have  intended  to  show  that  the  Good 
is  more  real  than  the  evil,  and  will  vindicate  itself.  But 
clearly  no  such  results  can  be  gained  by  taking  Nature 
as  a  standard  and  moving  toward  God  by  relations  of 
causality  or  purpose :  these  relations  can  rise  no  higher 
than  their  source.  It  is  the  denial  of  that  assumed 
starting-point  that  is  the  intellectual  heart  of  religion. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  dispense  with  the  world 
as  a  point  of  beginning  for  the  reasons  given.  What 
other  way,  then,  can  be  found  of  relating  this  world  to 
God  ?  Follow  the  history  of  religion.  Observe  the 
Mind  dissatisfied  with  its  world.  Note  the  criticism 
which  it  makes  of  Nature,  as  less  than  self-sufficient, 
less  than  all-good,  less  than  real.  And  note  that  of 
a  sudden  it  has  claimed  to  possess  the  self-sufficient, 
the  good,  the  real.  What  has  occurred  to  the  mind 
of  man  ? 

It  may  seem  as  though  that  with  which  man  had  been 
criticizing  his  experience,  namely,  his  idea  of  a  better 
and  more  real,  had  in  a  moment  taken  on  objective  shape 
to  him.  His  dissatisfaction  with  his  world  has  implied 
a  conception  of  a  world  not  thus  defective,  and  this  con- 
ception has  been  set  up  as  substantial  fact,  in  his  idea  of 
God.  He  has  turned  his  idea  into  a  reality  ;  or  he  has 
instinctively  assigned  a  reality  to  his  idea,  yet  without 
blurring  the  features  of  his  actual  world.  It  is  some 


THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  307 

leap  from  idea  to  reality  that  constitutes  the  essential 
historic  movement  of  the  mind  to  God. 

Now  it  is  just  this  leap  from  idea  to  reality  that  dis- 
tinguishes an  ancient  proof  of  God's  existence ;  a  proof 
which  has  become  known  as  the  "  ontological  argument," 
the  argument  which  assigns  a  real  or  ontological  value  to 
an  idea.  I  have  an  idea  of  God :  therefore  God  exists. 

In  general,  the  circumstance  that  I  have  an  idea  of  an 
object  is  the  emptiest  of  reasons  for  supposing  that  object 
to  exist.  Whatever  force  such  reasoning  can  have  must 
depend  on  some  peculiarities  of  the  idea  of  God,  not  found 
in  ideas  or  ideals  generally.  It  must  be  shown,  as 
we  tried  to  show  of  the  idea  of  Other  Mind,  that  this 
idea  has  something  unique  about  it  which  forbids  the 
supposition  that  it  is  a  "  mere  idea."  This,  with  various 
degrees  of  success,  have  the  thinkers  who  resort  to  the 
ontological  argument  —  from  Augustine  and  Anselm 
to  Hegel  and  Royce  —  tried  to  do.  It  is  always  with 
some  incredulity  that  we  meet  the  assertion  that  any 
idea  of  ours  carries  with  it  its  own  guarantee  of  reality. 
Yet  this  same  ontological  argument  is  the  only  one  which 
is  wholly  faithful  to  the  history,  the  anthropology,  of 
religion.  It  is  the  only  proof  of  God. 

Although  an  idea  which  should  carry  on  its  face  an 
assurance  of  reality  must  have  something  unique  about 
it,  we  are  not  without  analogies  which  may  help  to 
interpret  this  extraordinary  type  of  argument.  The  idea 
of  God  is  not  the  only  one  of  our  ideas  which  seems  to 
convey  an  assurance  of  objectivity.  My  idea  of  space, 
for  example,  I  incline  to  regard  as  real.  Of  my  idea  of 
causality ,  I  can  hardly  think  that  it  is  an  idea  only,  a 


308  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

form  of  relating  events  without  an  objective  counterpart. 
So  also  with  the  beauty  of  things,  or  their  goodness ; 
I  know  that  these  are  ideas  of  mine,  and  yet  as  I  regard 
these  qualities  valid  for  other  viewers  of  the  same  objects, 
I  attribute  these  qualities  to  the  objects.  Instinctively 
also  we  project  beyond  ourselves,  or  repudiate  in  some 
way  as  not  our  own,  whatever  in  idea  is  new,  whatever 
is  sublime  and  holy,  whatever  is  obligatory,  whatever 
strikes  me  with  a  consciousness  of  my  self  as  a  lesser 
thing.  Even  self -consciousness  seems  to  come,  at  times, 
as  a  revelation  from  beyond  myself.  It  is  not  without 
precedent,  then,  that  an  idea  should  convey  with  itself 
some  apparent  title  to  reality  :  it  is  not  impossible  that 
some  idea,  as  perchance  the  idea  of  God,  should  be  able 
to  make  this  title  good. 

Let  us  examine  this  movement  of  thought  more 
nearly.  Nature  must  early  have  appeared  to  man  as 
somewhat  less  than  real  —  else  those  early  speculations 
with  regard  to  a  creator  or  maker  would  hardly  have 
occurred  to  him.  At  the  root  of  all  these  awkward 
conceptions  regarding  clay-shaping  or  egg-laying  or 
spewing  or  magic-word-pronouncing  deities  lies  an 
uneasy  persuasion  that  the  things  of  physical  existence 
are  subject  to  something;  and  to  something  of  the 
quality  of  human  spirit.  If  Nature  ever  wore  to  early 
man  that  aspect  which  seems  primary  to  us  —  the 
aspect  of  self-sufficiency,  it  must  have  gone  hand  in  hand 
with  a  quite  contrary  aspect — that  of  being  illusory, 
also  possible  to  us,  though  with  some  effort. 

We  may  find  that  illusory  aspect  by  such  consid- 
erations as  these :  The  appearance  of  self-sufficiency 
belongs  not  more  to  Nature  as  a  whole  than  to  each  thing 


THE   ONTOLOGICAL   ARGUMENT  309 

in  Nature.  By  that  same  view  which  shows  us  Nature 
as  there  in  its  own  right,  is  also  each  thing  there  in 
its  own  right.  But  with  regard  to  the  several  things 
in  Nature  we  know  that  this  appearance  is  not  true* 
The  apparent  self-sufficiency  of  single  things  if  real 
would  make  the  World  an  aggregate  in  which  every 
thing  went  its  own  way  without  regard  to  another :  self- 
sufficiency  of  the  parts  is  equivalent  to  accidentality . 
Each  thing  is  in  reality  infinitely  dependent  on  all 
the  rest.  But  with  the  banishment  of  self-sufficiency 
in  the  parts,  there  is  no  retaining  of  it  in  the  Whole  : 
there  is  nothing  in  which  this  infinite  dependence  of 
part  on  part  comes  to  rest,  unless  I  conceive  the  whole 
thing  as  dependent  on  my  Self,  dream-fashion, —  deriv- 
ing its  reality,  so  to  speak,  from  the  center  outward, 
rather  than  from  inaccessible  infinitely  distant  world- 
borders  and  beginnings  inward.  The  world  is  real  I 
now  say  simply  as  my  experience  —  a  not-unheard-of 
point  of  view.  The  self-sufficient  world  of  Nature 
has  suddenly  become  an  illusion. 

Yet  I  cannot  rest  here ;  because  I  know  that  I  am 
not  the  source  of  the  reality  of  Nature.  True,  if  I  am 
not  real,  nothing  is  real :  something  in  my  conception 
of  reality  starts  from  me;  and  all  my  objects  become 
real,  as  by  infection  from  that.  But  true  it  is,  likewise, 
that  unless  Nature  is  real,  nothing  is  real:  something 
in  my  conception  of  reality  is  borne  in  upon  me  from 
beyond.  I  am  real,  in  part,  by  virtue  of  what  is  not- 
myself.  The  real  must  partake  of  the  qualities  of 
myself  and  of  Nature ;  and  must  be  other  than  either. 

Through  this  experience  of  cognitive  restlessness  (or 
"  dialectic ")  early  man,  to  whom  the  illusory  side  of 


310  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

Nature  was  more  familiar  probably  than  to  us,  may  have 
passed  in  his  own  readier  way ;  he  finds  as  his  resting 
place  the  real  as  Creative  Spirit.  Nature  settles  into 
its  third  stage  of  regard :  it  is  neither  self-sufficient  nor 
illusory ;  it  has  derivative  reality.  As  over  against  me, 
it  is  real ;  as  over  against  the  Creative  Spirit,  it  is  not 
real.  But  how  is  this  conception  hit  upon  ?  May  it 
be  that  this  thought  of  Nature  as  dependent  on  Spirit 
is  some  quick  embodiment  of  an  elusive  but  genuine 
experience  ?  This  idea  of  a  creator  does  indeed  quickly 
float  away  from  any  experience  it  may  have  sprung  from; 
becoming  promptly  materialized  and  set  in  the  sky  as 
part  of  the  world-created  —  removed  from  that  World, 
yet  all  too  much  involved  in  it.  Yet  may  it  be  that  this 
idea  is  one  which  must  have  reality  ? 

Must  it  not  be  so?  For  one  thing  I  cannot  by  any 
means  escape :  namely,  that  reality  itself  is  present  to 
me  in  experience;  and  all  of  this  process  of  judging 
this  and  that  thing  to  be  unreal  or  less  than  real  is  made 
possible  simply  by  the  grasp  of  that  reality  which  at 
any  moment  I  have.  My  negations  are  made  possible 
by  my  one  secure  position;  and  as  my  hold  on  reality 
is  variable,  so  my  ability  to  see  through  the  various 
pretenders-to-reality  to  reality  itself  will  vary.  Nature 
can  only  appear  to  me  as  illusory  in  some  moment  of 
unusual  clearness  of  perception ;  for  ordinarily  the  pre- 
tence of  nature  to  be  self-sufficient  is  a  harmless  and 
even  useful  simplification  of  my  view.  So  if  my  own 
existence  is  recognized  by  me  in  some  moment  as  a 
partial  and  dependent  existence,  that  recognition  is  a 
moment  of  "illumination,"  in  which  the  relation  of  my 
self  to  what  is  beyond  my  self  becomes  presently  dis- 


THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  311 

tinct :  and  in  grasping  this  relation,  I  am  catching  some 
fleeting  glimpse  of  the  terms  between  which  the  rela- 
tion exists.  I  am  experiencing  that  which  is  beyond 
myself  in  no  wise  differently  than  in  that  moment  I  am 
experiencing  myself:  and  my  judgment  of  dependence 
is  made  possible  by  a  positive  and  present  knowledge  of 
that  upon  which  I  depend. 

If,  then,  I  discover  that  my  world  of  nature  and  self, 
taken  severally  or  together,  falls  short  of  reality,  this  dis- 
covery is  due  to  what  I  know  of  reality  —  not  abstractly, 
but  in  experience.  If  I  judge  this  system  of  nature-and- 
self  to  be  non-self-sufficient,  it  is  by  a  knowledge  of  the 
self-sufficient ;  if  I  condemn,  it  is  by  virtue  of  something 
in  my  possession  not  subject  to  condemnation ;  if  I  crit- 
icize and  correct,  it  is  by  comparison  with  or  reference 
to  some  present  object  not  subject  to  criticism  and  cor- 
rection. When  I  perceive  myself  in  this  curious  rela- 
tion to  the  world  of  physical  facts  —  superior  and  not 
superior,  creative  and  unable  to  create  —  that  play  of 
unrest  is  due  to,  and  is  defining,  a  simultaneous  percep- 
tion of  the  object  to  which  this  unrest  does  not  apply. 
The  positive  content  which  I  give  to  that  absolute  object 
is  a  report  of  experience ;  whatever  idea  I  make  of  it  is 
an  idea  derived  nowhere  but  from  that  experience.  If 
I  am  able  to  frame  a  tenable  conception  of  nature  in 
dependence  upon  a  creative  spirit  not  myself,  that  con- 
ception is  true ;  for  my  idea  can  set  me  outside  of  nature 
only  as  in  experience  I  have  already  broken  away  from 
the  spell  of  the  natural  world.  In  whatever  sense,  then, 
I  am  able  to  conceive  nature  as  dependent  upon  spirit, 
in  that  sense  nature  is  dependent  upon  spirit.  This  idea 
carries  its  reality  with  it. 


312  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

It  is  impossible  that  my  idea  should  be  a  "mere" 
idea,  for  it  is  only  possible  for  me  to  take  this  stand- 
point, external  to  nature  and  myself,  in  idea  in  so  far  as 
I  do  at  the  same  time  take  it  in  experience  also.  And 
that  this  experience  of  a  more  valid  reality  than  that  of 
nature  is  truly  described  as  an  experience  of  other  mind, 
we  have  in  our  previous  chapter  sufficiently  dwelt  upon. 
The  ontological  argument  may  be  regarded  as  a  logi- 
cal epitome  of  what  we  there,  in  our  own  independent 
research,  came  upon.1  The  ontological  argument,  in  its 
true  form,  is  a  report  of  experience. 

If  we  wished,  in  briefest  compass,  to  state  the  antith- 
esis between  the  ontological  argument  and  other  argu- 
ments for  the  existence  of  a  God,  we  might  put  the 
situation  thus : 

These  other  arguments  reason  that  because  the  world 
is*  God  is.  The  ontological  argument  reasons  that 
because  the  world  is  not,  God  is.  It  is  not  from  the 
world  as  a  stable  premise  that  we  can  proceed  to  God 
as  a  conclusion  :  it  is  rather  when  the  world  ceases  to 
satisfy  us  as  a  premise,  and  appears  as  a  conclusion  from 
something  more  substantial,  that  we  find  God  —  pro- 
ceeding then  from  the  world  as  a  conclusion  to  God  as 
a  premise.  We  have  no  other  premise  to  begin  with  :  no 
proof  of  God  can  be  deductive.  It  is  because  neither  my 
world  nor  myself  can  serve  as  a  foundation  for  thought 
and  action  that  I  must  grope  for  a  deeper  foundation. 

1  Here  the  abstract  argument  of  a  former  part  of  the  book  (ch.  xli) 
maintaining  the  need  of  religion  for  basis  in  an  independent  reality,  begins 
to  receive  its  concrete  filling.  I  may  again  refer  the  reader  for  further 
illustration  of  this  logical  situation  to  the  appended  essay  on  "  The  Knowl- 
edge of  Independent  Reality." 


THE   ONTOLOGICAL   ARGUMENT  313 

And  what  I  learn  in  this  groping  is,  that  my  conscious- 
ness of  those  defects  will  reveal,  though  in  faintest  de- 
gree, the  positive  object  which  is  free  therefrom.  It  is 
because  we  cannot  infer  from  nature  to  God  along  causal 
or  other  natural  lines,  and  only  because  of  this,  that  the 
idea  of  God  implies  existence. 

It  is  not  every  historical  form  of  the  ontological  argu- 
ment that  has  expressed  this  experience :  and  not 
every  form  of  it  appears  to  me  valid.  It  does  not  seem 
to  me  that  any  abstract  idea  of  an  "  all-perfect  being  " 
must  necessarily  be  real.  Nor  does  it  seem  to  me  that 
we  are  justified  in  inferring  from  any  idea  to  its  reality 
unless  that  reality  can  be  present  to  the  idea  in  experi- 
ence. No  form  of  the  argument  can  be  valid  which  finds 
God  at  the  level  of  thought  only,  and  not  at  the  level  of 
sensation.  We  are  only  justified  in  attributing  reality 
to  an  idea  if  reality  is  already  present  in  the  discovery  of 
the  idea.  When  in  our  search  for  reality  we  fix  atten- 
tion upon  Nature,  it  is  because  we  already  know  that 
whatever  reality  is,  it  cannot  be  out  of  connection  with 
that  world  of  Nature-experience :  and  when  we  judge 
Nature  unreal,  it  is  only  as  we  discover  at  the  same  time 
in  concrete  way  how  Nature  is  related  to  the  Real.  I 
can  infer  from  that  idea  by  which  I  criticize  Nature  to 
the  reality  of  that  idea  only  because  I  know  Nature  (and 
Self)  to  contain  some  characters  of  reality  that  cannot 
be  omitted,  or  left  behind.  My  real  must  already  be 
given,  in  order  that  my  idea  may  be  found  real.  The 
true  idea  of  God  is  not  one  which  can  leave  out  either 
Nature  or  myself ;  if  my  idea  of  God  is  real,  it  is  real 
in  experience.  Hence  I  have  preferred  to  state  the 


314  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

argument  not  thus :  I  have  an  idea  of  God,  therefore 
God  exists.  But  rather  thus :  I  have  an  idea  of  God, 
therefore  I  have  an  experience  of  God. 

Reality  can  only  be  proved  by  the  ontological  argu- 
ment; and  conversely,  the  ontological  argument  can  only 
be  applied  to  reality.  But  in  so  far  as  reality  dwells  in 
Self,  or  Other  Mind,  or  Nature,  an  ontological  argu- 
ment may  be  stated  in  proof  of  their  existence.  Thus, 
the  Cartesian  certitude  may  with  greater  validity  be  put 
into  this  form : 

I  think  myself,  therefore  I  exist;  or 

I  have  an  idea  of  Self,  Self  exists. 
For  in  thinking  myself  I  find  myself  in  experience  and 
thus  in  living  relation  to  that  reality  which  experience 
presents.     So  may  it  be  with  Nature : 

I  have  an  idea  of  physical  Nature,  Nature  exists. 
That  is,  in  whatever  sense  I  conceive  Nature,  in  that 
sense  physical  nature  is  real.  Idealism  has  wavered 
much  in  its  judgment  regarding  the  reality  of  Nature, 
and  of  "material  substance."  It  has  said  that  we  have 
no  idea  of  matter;  and  again  it  has  said  that  matter 
does  not  exist,  which  implies  that  we  have  an  idea  of  it. 
Some  meaning,  however,  we  do  attribute  to  the  word 
matter;  and  without  enquiring  what  that  definable  mean- 
ing may  be,  we  may  say  in  advance  that  whatever  idea 
is  framable  corresponds  to  reality  as  experienced.  We 
need  not  fear  that  this  realism  of  Nature  will  detach 
Nature  from  God;  though  if  we  could  think  it  so 
detached  it  would  doubtless  so  exist.  For  of  independ- 
ence also,  in  whatever  sense  I  can  think  the  independ- 
ence of  beings,  in  that  sense  independence  obtains 
between  them.  That  which  is  most  independent  of  me, 


THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  316 

namely  the  Other  Mind,  has  been  the  first  object  of  our 
ontological  findings.  The  object  of  certain  knowledge 
has  this  threefold  structure,  Self,  Nature,  and  Other 
Mind;  and  God,  the  appropriate  object  of  ontological 
proof,  includes  these  three. 

And  is  not,  after  all,  this  same  ancient  ontological 
argument  the  great  and  timely  necessity  for  man  in 
all  his  thinking?  That  which  permanently  threatens 
all  our  thinking  is  the  damning  commentary,  "mere 
thought"  —  our  own  commentary  on  our  own  work, 
especially  upon  our  own  religion.  Escape  from  illu- 
sion is  what  we  require,  whether  in  dealing  with  God  or 
man  or  nature ;  escape  from  phantasmal  intercourse,  from 
subjective  prisons  from  whose  walls  words  and  prayers 
rebound  without  outer  effect.  Idea  we  must  have  if  we| 
ithink;  but  an  adequate  realism  for  our  idea  we  must) 
jalso  have.  We  shall  never  be  too  fully  assured  that 
our  idea  has  reached  beyond  ourself ,  and  has  its  ground 
in  that  which  is  not  ourself. 

Any  reflection  that  can  infallibly  break  the  walls  of 
the  Self,  opens  up  at  once  an  infinite  World-field.  Set 
a  second  to  my  One,  and  I  have  given  all  the  numbers. 
A  single  point  outside  the  circle  of  "  Bewusstseins- 
immanenz"  and  I  am  free  to  open  myself  to  all  reality 
and  to  all  men.  It  is  this  point  that  the  ontological 
argument  aims  to  put  into  our  possession  ;  the  reflection 
which  this  argument  embodies  is  the  only,  and  wholly 
simple,  defence  against  our  besetting  subjectivity.  "  Be- 
think thyself  of  the  ground  whereon  thou  standest.  By 
what  idea  hast  thou  judged  thy  thought  to  be  illusion, 
and  mere  subjectivity  ?  Is  it  not  by  an  idea  of  some- 


316  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

thing  wholly  actual  and  immediate  ?  Is  not  that  Real- 
ity thy  own  present  possession  ?  " 

This  present  actuality  of  experience,  "  pure  experi- 
ence," finds  me  in  living  relation  with  that  which  is 
most  utterly  not-myself .  Here,  in  the  immediate,  is  my 
absolute  escape  from  immediacy.  Here  in  the  given 
present  is  my  escape  from  myself,  my  window  opening 
upon  infinity,  my  exit  into  God.  Religion  thus  becomes 
the  concrete  bond  between  men ;  for  he  who  has  con- 
sciously found  his  way  to  God,  has  found  his  way  to 
man  also. 

Thus  it  is  that  idea  may  give  back  the  reality  of 
which  idea  is  forever  robbing  us ;  for  while  idea  is  the 
greatest  enemy  of  the  actual,  it  is  only  through  idea 
that  idea  can  be  held  firmly  to  its  compelling  and  con- 
trolling object,  the  real  as  found  in  experience. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
DEVELOPMENT   OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD 

MAN  knows  well  that  he  is  not  alone :  he  does  not 
so  well  know  in  what  companionship  he  is.  The 
knowledge  of  the  presence  of  spirit  beyond  self  is  no 
conjecture;  nor  does  this  social  experience  ever  arise. 
Man's  world  is  from  the  first  a  living  world,  even  a 
divine  world;  and  primitive  animism  is  in  so  far  no 
mere  theory,  but  a  report  of  certain  and  intimate  expe- 
rience. There  are  no  dead  things  in  that  early  world 
of  swarming  spirits. 

But  this,  we  think,  is  at  once  its  glory  and  its  chief 
defect.  The  idea  of  Other  Mind  is  applied  too  indis- 
criminately, and  in  too  petty  a  fashion.  The  conception 
of  the  inanimate  is  one  we  have  had  to  work  for.  The 
growth  of  social  intelligence  is  in  the  direction  of  clear- 
ing away  the  exuberance  of  animce,  of  charting  certain 
large  tracts  of  Nature  which  we  may  regard  as  uninhabited, 
and  hence  subject  to  unlimited  remorseless  exploitation. 
We  require  —  not  so  much  for  free  movement  as  for 
free-hearted  movement — a  belief  in  the  dead:  we  need 
to  know  Nature  as  very  largely  environment,  and  very 
little  body-of-Mind ;  we  need  to  regard  the  phenomena 
of  physical  fact  for  the  most  part  as  essentially  the 
world  of  objects,  of  things  intended  rather  than  of 
intentions,  mine  of  meanings  to  be  dug  out,  veil  of 
osmosis  between  humanity  and  Creative  Spirit  gener- 


318  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

ally — having  no  intrinsic  claim  on  deference  for  its 
own  sake. 

We  find  it  even  now  hard  enough  to  decide,  as  we 
pass  down  the  scale  of  organisms  and  therefrom  into 
the  inorganic  world,  where  animation  ceases — or  whether 
it  ceases.  Even  of  such  conquests  as  we  have  made, 
our  sense  of  continuity — and  doctrines  of  panpsychism 
— are  willing  to  deprive  us.  It  is  hard  to  conceive  that 
the  livingness  of  micro-organisms  is  to  be  traced  back- 
ward, not  to  the  atoms  and  molecules  which  have  been 
synthesized  in  their  protoplasm,1  but  to  the  whole  liv- 
ing world  itself.  Yet  this  way  lies  progress.  Not  all 
the  world  is  body;  not  every  unit  our  fancy  outlines  as 
One  Thing  is  the  metaphor  of  an  individual  spirit.  Our 
animistic  world  must  be  clarified,  and  its  life  concen- 
trated in  more  definite  foci ;  gaining  at  once  in  meaning 
and  in  character. 

This  is,  I  suppose,  the  sense  of  the  advance  by  which 
man  gets  himself  gods  in  place  of  spirits  only.  Spirits 
are  mere  flashes  of  divine  life  breaking  out  here  and 
there,  spot-wise,  in  Nature  and  in  human  event,  as  we 
have  seen.  They  float  with  the  stream  of  event,  pass 
with  the  event,  are  numerous  as  the  events  are  numerous, 
have  no  persistent  individuality,  are  remembered  only 
as  a  shock  or  an  excitement  is  remembered,  take  alto- 
gether the  character  of  the  historic  medium  in  which 
they  are  found.  There  are  no  gods  here.  Nor  can  there 
be  gods  until  man  in  some  way  begins  to  think.  He 
must  get  his  world  into  more  general  unities  by  clas- 
sifying and  speculating :  he  must  see  similarities  in  the 
forces  of  light  and  storm  and  sea,  in  the  life-producing 

1  See  for  example  Verworn,  Protistenstudien. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     319 

agencies  of  plant  and  animal  and  man;  and,  perhaps 
with  the  division  of  labor  in  his  own  societies,  he  must 
conceive  the  functions  of  the  spirits,  and  assign  a  recur- 
ring though  intermittent  function  (healing,  or  luck 
of  chase,  or  boundary-protection,  or  sending  of  sons) 
to  a  special,  or  at  least  continuous,  spiritual  agency. 
Thus  arise  functional  deities,  and  causal  deities,  and 
deities  presiding  over  the  three  or  four  great  spheres 
of  Nature,  heaven,  earth,  sky,  water;  and  even  deities 
of  species — as  of  tree-life  in  general  or  of  fox-life  or  of 
eagle-life,  deities  which  pass  from  one  fox  or  eagle  to 
another  on  the  death  or  sacrifice  of  the  one,  from  the 
whole  of  a  field  to  its  last  sheaf  as  the  harvesting 
progresses,  and  then  —  reappear  next  year  in  the  next 
crop.  All  these  take  the  place  of  the  fitful  spirits  of  par- 
ticular objects  and  events,  not  without  aid  from  all  the 
agencies  of  man's  growing  culture  which  are  fostering 
this  thinking  process;  and  man  finds  himself  supplied 
with  gods. 

But  there  is  one  other  character  of  a  god,  lacking 
to  spirits,  beside  these  of  continuous  individuality,  wide 
scope,  and  definite  function  or  group  of  functions.  The 
god  is  addressed:  men  use  toward  the  god  the  vocative 
case;  use  "Thou"  and  not  only  "It"  or  "He."  The 
god  having  a  continuous  character  may  also  support  a 
definite  relationship,  even  an  institution  of  intercourse- 
In  gaining  a  more  general  scope,  the  god  has  loosened 
his  attachment  to  particular  physical  objects;  but  he 
never  completely  detaches  himself  from  the  tangible: 
he  resides,  perhaps  voluntarily,  in  some  special  place  or 
thing — and  this  relic  and  clue  to  the  god,  seems  to 
serve  as  the  means  of  approach,  physical  and  mental. 


320  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

Through  his  holy  place,  his  temple,  his  pillar,  his  image, 
his  altar,  his  ark,  the  spirit  becomes  an  historic  god, 
worshipable  by  an  historic  people  in  definite  institu- 
tional ways. 

Herewith  the  way  is  opened  for  a  new  method  of 
progress  in  divine  knowledge,  —  the  method  of  experi- 
ment: the  god's  dealings  with  his  worshippers  become 
matter  of  record  in  tradition :  and  slow  as  men  are  to 
learn  new  things  about  deity,  or  to  give  up  old  ones,  there 
is  a  wholly  verifiable  process  of  elimination  and  survival 
of  ideas  about  God,  predicates  of  God,  in  religions  which 
have  attained  the  historic  stage.  With  the  acquisition 
of  a  god  in  place  of  a  spirit,  the  knowledge  of  God 
becomes  a  matter  of  tribal,  national,  racial  experience. 

It  is  not  my  intention  here  to  follow  the  history  of 
the  growth  of  the  idea  of  God,  even  if  that  were  possi- 
ble. I  wish  to  consider  only  some  of  the  principles 
involved  in  this  growth  and  a  few  of  its  directions. 

It  is  a  curious  paradox  that  this  most  original  and 
constant  knowledge  should  be  the  one  most  and  longest 
subject  to  change,  the  most  ancient  subject  of  human 
experimentation,  the  most  encumbered  with  rubbish 
and  error.  We  understand  in  part  the  reasons  for  these 
errors.  We  understand  that  it  is  not  natural  for  man 
to  reflect,  becoming  fully  aware  of  that  with  which  he 
is  thinking.  We  understand  that  we  have  little  or  no 
native  power  of  recognizing  either  self  or  God  apart 
from  mediators :  so  that  in  the  conceptions  we  make 
of  God  there  must  always  be  an  overburden  and  over- 
influence  of  the  medium,  physical  or  personal,  wherein 
God  is  thought. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE   KNOWLEDGE   OF  GOD     321 

Still,  we  have  not  to  read  the  development  of  religious 
thought  as  a  progress  from  error  to  truth.  We  must 
read  it  as  a  progress  of  growing  acquaintance,  adding 
to  ideas  which  from  the  first  have  been  true  within  their 
own  intention.  Early  man  thinks  of  God,  no  doubt, 
more  truly  than  he  is  able  to  say  or  hand  down  in  lan- 
guage ;  and  we  cannot  forget  that  it  is  his  infallible 
identification  of  God  in  experience  which  enables  him 
from  time  to  time  to  correct  his  straying  conceptions. 
After  all,  there  is  no  other  essential  error  in  thinking 
of  God  than  this :  that  God  becomes  an  object  among 
other  objects,  natural  or  psychical.  And  this  is  not  all 
error.  For  not  only  do  these  over- materialized  concep- 
tions hold  fast  the  genuine  objectivity  of  God  (which 
all-important  character  is  usually  weakened  by  attempts 
to  think  of  God  as  pure  spirit) ;  but  further,  there  is 
indispensable  truth  in  the  tendency  to  incarnate  God  in 
his  works,  and  to  think  of  him  as  there  where  his  activ- 
ity is,  and  where  his  objects  are.  I  would  rather  have 
a  worshipper  of  a  thousand  idols  than  a  worshipper  of  a 
subjective  deity  or  of  an  abstraction. 

What  a  man  begins  with  in  knowing  God  is  truth. 
He  adds  to  this,  further  truth  and  an  admixture  of 
error  and  earth.  The  elimination  of  this  error  by  fur- 
ther experience  does  at  the  same  time  develop  the  truth 
still  farther.  The  growth  in  the  knowledge  of  God  is 
a  growth  of  predicates.  Every  mediator  gives  some 
quality  or  predicate  to  the  experience  of  God.  The 
early  mediation  of  God-knowledge  is  fragmentary  and 
occasional,  albeit  cumulative :  but  with  progress  further 
aspects  of  experience,  social,  political,  moral,  concerns 
of  theory  and  art,  acquire  reference  to  the  conscious- 


322  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

ness  of  God,  until  it  becomes  a  postulate  of  religion 
that  God  is  to  be  seen  in  everything,  even  in  evil.  As 
many  mediators,  so  many  predicates ;  and  doubtless  so 
many  problems  also.  For  a  predicate  is,  in  general, 
nearly  as  false  as  it  is  true  ;  and  the  accumulation  of 
religious  knowledge  is  no  simple  sum  of  positive  con- 
tributions. Yet  given  the  infallible  identity  of  the 
subject-matter,  the  growth  of  this  knowledge  is  not  in 
principle  unlike  that  of  all  knowledge. 

There  is  one  peculiarity,  however,  that  deserves  men- 
tion. I  have  said  that  these  predicates  of  God  are, 
each  one  of  them,  nearly  as  false  as  true ;  always  in 
need  of  being  balanced  by  a  predicate  of  opposite  or 
contrasting  name.1  God  is  person  and  no-person  ;  lov- 

1  Among  the  psychological  reasons  for  the  inadequacy  of  any  given 
predicate  is  this  :  that  as  such  predicates  arise  in  experience  their  most 
emphatic  elements  are  their  negations.  They  are  surer  of  what  they 
deny  than  of  what  they  affirm ;  and  should  be  read  in  the  light  of  these 
denials.  Those  occasions  which  early  excite  the  specifically  religious 
turn  of  reflection  are  occasions,  as  we  can  now  see,  when  some  incongruity 
is  felt  in  applying  the  usual  habits  of  thought.  Thus  in  the  event  of  a 
birth.  The  insistent  naturalism  of  the  birth  process  clashes  hard  against 
man's  pride  and  spiritual  self-consciousness.  There  is  unfailingly  roused 
some  doubt  of  Nature,  some  wonder  ending  in  a  denial  in  which  flesh  is 
reduced  from  a  finality  to  a  symbol.  The  reality  of  the  birth,  so  we  assert, 
is  something  other  and  more  than  its  physiology;  and  this  something 
other  is  able  to  confer  dignity  and  awe  on  that  event.  All  this,  which 
.here  takes  the  form  of  an  inference,  is  in  fact  a  direct  report  of  the  feel- 
ings that  here,  though  with  greater  struggle  than  usual,  the  spirit  alone 
is  real  and  essential,  not  deserting  nor  despising  but  interpreting  the 
material.  So  with  other  propitious  and  unpropitious  aspects  of  experience, 
with  disease,  and  death,  and  marriage,  and  wherever  the  course  of  events 
most  surely  and  elementally  strikes  religious  fire  :  the  same  sense  of 
incongruity  arid  conflict  will  be  found.  And  in  all  this  man  is  naturally 
more  aware  of  the  checkage,  the  emotion,  the  disturbance  in  self-con- 
sciousness,  than  he  can  be  of  that  by  which  the  habits  of  his  thought  are 
being  checked  (on  the  one  hand)  and  maintained  (on  the  other),  — his 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     323 

ing  and  non-loving  ;  fighter  and  no  fighter;  just  and 
yet  alike  to  all ;  merciful  and  unbending.  The  positive 
and  tenable  value  of  any  predicate,  subject  to  such  sub- 
tractions, is  problematic.  God  appears  as  a  being  in 
whom  opposite  traits  are  strangely  united:  but  the 
nature  of  the  center  in  which  such  oppositions  agree, 
or  are  neutralized,  is  not  picturable  —  is  known,  if  at 
all,  only  to  immediate  experience.  As  an  object  in  the 
world  of  objects,  God  is  next  to  nothing  ;  so  the  mys- 
tics have  always  truly  said.  Hence  atheism  is  truer 
than  many  a  florid  religiosity  whose  God  is  but  a  sur- 
feited agglomerate  of  laudatory  epithets.  Atheism  is 
the  proper  purgative  for  this  kind  of  religion ;  and  has 
been  historically  an  indispensable  agency  in  deepening 
and  keeping  sound  the  knowledge  of  God. 

But  atheism  discards  the  one  hopeful  element  in  the 
situation,  —  namely,  that  God  may  actually  furnish  the 
solution  of  these  dilemmas;  which  are  never  problems 
about  God  alone,  but  are  at  the  same  time  threatened  split- 
tings in  the  world  of  human  idea  and  ideal.  For  man, 
as  a  thing  of  Nature,  is  a  being  of  opposing  instincts, 
whose  balance  becomes  increasingly  fine ;  and  only  in  the 
increasing  security  of  hold  upon  some  Absolute,  such 
as  sanctions  both  the  one  and  the  other  of  the  diver- 
gent ideals,  can  his  tottering  balance  be  kept.  With 
his  God,  as  a  god  of  opposing  predicates,  this  growing 
instability  of  human  nature  becomes  a  condition  of 

ultimate  consciousness  of  God.  He  is  moved,  but  he  does  not  see  clearly 
of  what  idea  his  feeling  is  the  work.  He  reports  his  experience,  there- 
fore, in  the  form  of  dogma  ;  adopting  such  positive  objects  as  he  can 
distinguish  and  judge  appropriate  to  his  feeling.  Hence  his  dogma  is 
permanently  subject  to  the  elimination  of  whatever  is  extraneous  in  the 
assumed  objects. 


324  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

speed  in  his  forward  movement.  Thus,  in  more  senses 
than  one,  is  God  the  pledge  of  the  unity  of  human 
nature.  It  is  by  holding  vigorously  to  the  identity  of 
the  ultimate  Object  of  experience  that  the  antitheses  in 
the  judgments  about  God  (and  about  man)  do  in  time 
get  their  positive  solution.  But  let  us  consider  some 
of  these  antitheses. 

One  elementary  antithesis  in  the  thought  of  God  is 
that  between  the  one  and  the  many  ;  between  polytheism 
and  monotheism.  This  is  a  primitive  antithesis,  but 
also  a  permanent  one  :  for  every  other  antithesis  has 
some  bearing  on  this  one,  —  as,  for  example,  that  be- 
tween the  personal  and  the  impersonal.  God  as  per- 
sonal inclines  to  be  many,  since  the  personal  being 
seems  to  have  outline,  and  to  need  external  relations 
to  other  persons:  even  in  Christianity  the  persons  of 
God  are  three,  whereas  the  Godhead  which  is  one  is 
relatively  neuter. 

The  development  of  religion  has  been,  in  the  main, 
in  the  direction  of  unifying  the  heavens,  a  continuation 
of  the  movement  from  spirit  to  the  god.  But  there 
is  a  current  in  the  opposite  direction  also.  The  god- 
meaning  has  always  been  single ;  that  is,  spirits  have 
always  been  known  as  belonging  to  the  genus  divine, 
supernatural.  And  this  belonging  to  the  one  genus 
has  frequently  meant,  even  for  very  primitive  thinkers, 
a  participation  in  one  pervasive  world-energy.1  Behind 
the  numerous  gods  we  can  usually  discover  a  more 
general  divinity,  vaguer  but  also  more  exalted,  and 

1  See  Arthur  0.  Lovejoy.      The  Fundamental  Concept  of  the  Primi- 
tive Philosophy. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE   KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     325 

often  more  ancient  than  the  rest.  Man  has  never  been 
in  doubt  that  the  qualities  of  God  are  such  as  can 
belong  only  to  one ;  and  even  when  he  has  many  deities, 
they  are  addressed  in  turn  (for  the  most  part)  as  the 
all-powerful,  the  Lord  of  lords.  A  polytheism  that  is 
not  in  some  sense  a  henotheism  is  yet  to  be  discovered. 
The  many  gods  have  had  their  birth  one  by  one,  each 
one  in  turn  a  god,  —  or  rather  an  attempt  at  God.  The 
gods  must  grow  in  number  because  the  first  god-shapes 
are  too  poor.  Each  god  satisfies  within  the  region  of 
his  own  group  of  events ;  seems  hero  and  superlative 
enough  in  his  own  province.  But  another  province 
requires  another  figure  of  God.  Hence  we  may  say 
that  polytheisms  are  galleries  of  aborted  monotheisms ; 
collections  of  god-figures  each  of  which  well  intends  to 
be  all,  but  is  incompetent.  There  is  no  such  thing  in 
history  as  a  primitive  monotheism ;  but  there  is  a  per- 
manent singleness  in  the  thought  of  deity  which  man 
forever  departs  from,  through  loyalty  to  the  variety  of 
deity's  manifestations. 

Polytheism  then  has  its  right ;  its  richness ;  its 
acknowledgment  of  the  omnipresence  of  deity.  It  is 
truer  than  many  a  monotheism.  Premature  monothe- 
isms have  invariably  been  too  poor.  Witness  the  sad- 
fated  monotheistic  moment  of  Egypt ;  the  sun-disk  god 
of  Amenophis  IV.  Witness  those  other  royal  mono- 
theisms in  Peru  and  Mexico.  There  was  memorable 
reasoning  in  that  speech  of  the  Inca  in  religious  con- 
clave, worthy  of  being  transmitted  from  times  long 
prior  to  the  Spanish  discovery :  "  We  are  told,  he  said, 
that  the  Sun  has  made  all  things.  But  this  cannot  be •, 
for  many  things  happen  when  he  is  absent.  He  behaves 


326  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

neither  like  a  living  thing,  —  for  he  never  tires;  nor 
like  a  free  thing,  —  for  he  never  varies  his  path.  There- 
fore the  sun  must  have  his  master,  greater  than  he ; 
which  greater  god  we  ought  to  worship."  Yet  it  was 
not  the  destiny  of  this  greater  god,  nor  of  the  greater 
gods  of  Persia  nor  of  India  to  attain  sway  over  the 
religious  sense  of  man.  Pantheism  goes  farther,  is 
able  to  dissolve  and  absorb  the  many  partial  deities ;  but 
pantheism  also  is  a  unity  still  too  poor  and  quantitative, 
breaking  out  everywhere  in  assertions  wholly  polytheis- 
tic, "  This  thing  is  god,  —  and  that,  and  that."  It  is 
long  before  monotheism  can  be  true  for  man's  concep- 
tion. It  cannot  be  true  until  after  much  free  growth  of 
the  God-idea  (in  which  each  new  element  in  the  concep- 
tion of  God  may  appear  as  the  birth  of  a  new  deity),  God 
can  be  known  in  experience  as  the  one  of  all  these  many. 

Another  antithesis  is  that  between  God  as  near  and 
God  as  remote ;  an  antithesis  which  has  taken  technical 
shape  as  that  between  the  transcendence  and  the  imma- 
nence of  God.  This  also  is  associated  with  the  contrast 
between  the  personal  and  the  impersonal.  For  the  god 
who  is  near  is  apt  to  be  thought  of  as  sympathetic,  and 
so  far  like  mankind ;  the  remote  god  is  thought  of  for 
the  most  part  as  unlike  and  impersonal.  In  the  logic 
of  the  Inca  reformer  above  quoted,  the  deity  in  becom- 
ing one  became  at  the  same  time  more  remote  and  less 
personal :  his  temple  near  Callao  held  no  images,  and 
witnessed  no  sacrifices. 

Here  again  the  direction  of  religious  progress  is  not 
single,  but  twofold.  We  have  heard  much  in  recent 
years  of  the  advantages  of  the  immanent  God ;  and  I 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     327 

have  nothing  to  say  in  doubt  of  these  advantages  — 
they  are  the  modern  form  of  the  more  omnipresent  and 
polytheistic  aspects  of  religion.  But  they  are  fatal 
advantages  if  they  lose  from  sight  that  other  direction 
of  progress,  notable  from  the  earliest,  the  retreat  of  God. 
Religion  may  be  too  romantic,  too  much  interested  in 
what  is  not  here  but  beyond  somewhere  in  the  ineffable; 
yet  religion  if  it  lives  chiefly  in  the  next  things  will 
turn  out  to  be  no  religion  at  all.  In  proportion  as  the 
religious  horizon  is  drawn  close,  the  gamut  of  religious 
experience  becomes  trivial. 

Early  gods  are  like  man  and  near  him.  But  still, 
they  were  as  unlike  and  as  remote  as  he  could  imagine 
them.  The  differences  between  spirits  and  men,  the  gulf 
fixed  between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  —  gulf 
leaped  in  death — the  exaggerations  and  superlatives, 
these  are  as  important  parts  of  the  conception  as  are 
the  likenesses  and  the  simplicities  of  intercourse.  When 
man  can  think  beyond  the  sun,  and  beyond  the  sky,  — 
there  God  goes,  and  probably  first  goes.  For  the  God- 
idea,  as  the  limiting  idea  of  man,  is  also  his  explorative 
idea :  by  dwelling  in  speculative  fancy  on  that  which 
is  beyond  what  he  has  yet  thought,  man  prepares  the 
next  conceptual  conquests  —  wins  at  length  one  more 
idea  of  which  he  must  say,  God  is  not  that.  We  need 
not  fear  that  God  will  be  thrust  out  of  consciousness 
by  this  effort  to  assign  him  ultimate  otherness;  for 
God-thinking  can  not  well  expel  God  from  thought.  On 
the  contrary  the  work  done,  and  the  potential  acquired, 
by  dint  of  such  endless  series  of  negations,  is  a  most 
practical  measure  of  the  worth  of  that  conception  for 
the  lives  of  the  thinkers. 


328  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

For  we  do  not  find  that  the  greatness  of  man  and 
the  importance  of  human  business  are  in  proportion  to 
the  restriction  of  man's  outlook,  but  the  reverse.  The 
present  day  has  its  supreme  worth,  every  present  moment 
is  the  measure  of  all  the  rest :  but  this  is  so,  in  the 
main,  because  every  present  day  is  a  the  conflux  of  two 
eternities,"  which  eternities  being  eliminated  the  worth 
disappears  also.  We  have  outgrown  the  days  when 
we  make  the  citizen  great  by  making  the  government 
small ;  we  shall  outgrow  the  days  when  we  make  man 
great  by  making  God  small  and  useful. 

The  apostle  of  the  present  moment  depends  for  his 
persuasiveness  upon  his  skilful  use  of  the  remote.  The 
charm  of  Omar  is  wholly  dependent  upon  his  vision  of 
the  long  reaches  of  destiny  in  which  that  moment  is 
framed,  and  which  none  knows  how  to  invoke  more 
finely  than  Omar  himself.  It  is  the  thought  of  the 
Seven  Seas  which  makes  the  plash  of  the  pebble  a  mel- 
ancholy marvel :  and  it  is  the  vista  of  the  long  human 
caravan,  with  a  delicate  loyalty  to  its  shadowy  figures 
as  they  vanish,  which  lifts  Omar's  own  moment  from 
the  level  of  the  sensual  into  the  atmosphere  of  alluring 
poetic  worth.  It  is  that  remote  thing  with  which  we 
think  the  present  that  gives  value  to  the  present.  And 
in  this  same  way,  and  quite  unconsciously  for  the  most 
part,  the  remote  God-thought  of  the  Orient  (where  the 
sublimity  and  romance  of  religion  are  native-air)  has 
served  through  centuries  to  preserve  from  utter  desola- 
tion the  value-element  in  millions  of  careers  which  to 
our  eyes  are  inconceivably  monotonous  and  intolerable. 

The  near-by  deity  of  a  religion  that  betones  imma- 
nence proves  in  experience  to  be  a  baffling  object  of 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     329 

worship.  Paradoxically  enough  he  is  not  so  accessible 
as  the  unreachable  God.  If  we  look  through  the  history 
of  religion  for  instances  of  genuine  intimacy  between  the 
worshipper  and  his  god,  we  do  not  light  upon  sorcerers 
generally  and  their  "  familiar "  spirits,  nor  upon  the 
relation  between  the  human  Greek  and  his  human  Zeus. 
There  could  be  no  intimacy  here,  simply  because  this 
Zeus  was  all  too  near  and  all  too  human.  Such  deities 
have  descended  too  far  into  the  current  of  the  world  in 
which  all  things  and  all  spirits  are  insulated  one  from 
another.  We  might  more  probably  think  of  the  Persian 
Mazdeans,  between  whom  and  their  Ahura  there  was  a 
tie  of  remarkable  intensity :  and  yet  Ahura  Mazda  even 
more  than  the  god  of  the  Jews  was  a  being  of  remote 
and  transcendent  nature.  The  explanation  of  the 
paradox  seems  to  be  this :  that  the  effort  to  think  God 
must  first  differentiate  God  from  our  other  objects. 
But  we  also  are  in  a  different  world  from  that  of  any 
of  our  World-objects :  something  in  us  is  foreign  and 
transcendent  to  all  that  we  view.  There  could  be  no 
absolute  rapprochement  between  the  heart  of  this  alien- 
within-the-world  which  we  call  Self  and  its  God,  unless 
that  God  were  also  in  some  way  alien  to  that  same 
realm.  Worship  must  be  always  in  some  measure,  as 
Plotinus  puts  it,  a  flight  of  the  Alone  to  the  Alone. 

The  religion  of  Brahm  is  the  historic  demonstration 
of  this  truth,  in  the  abstract.  For  these  Brahman 
pietists  who  most  clearly  recognized  and  defined  the 
otherness  of  God  from  all  things  phenomenal  and  even 
conceivable  were  the  ones  who  first  asserted  (so  far 
as  history  knows)  the  immediate  unity  between  the 
ineffable  without  and  the  ineffable  within. 


330  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

Upon  this  point  of  the  remoteness  of  God  as  object 
we  have  much  to  relearn  that  the  Orient  has  never 
forgotten.  We  have  God  the  Son,  as  they  had  not : 
there  is  little  danger  that  we  shall  lose  the  perception 
of  the  divinity  of  the  Life  within  Nature  and  Man  and 
Present  Affairs.  But  while  God  the  Son  may  now  have 
become  our  necessary  way  to  practical  union  with  the 
Father,  yet  the  Father  must  first  be  known  before  the 
Son  is  recognized  as  God.  Without  the  Father,  the 
Son  is  a  mere  man :  for  the  incarnate  is  always  bound 
and  infected  by  the  finite  thing  it  touches.  Until  the 
human  spirit  knows  the  self  that  is  more  at  home  in  the 
infinite  than  here  among  Things,  it  has  not  yet  found 
its  Self  nor  its  God.  Only  the  transcendent  God  can 
be  truly  immanent.  This  also  is  a  matter  of  experience. 

One  of  the  most  striking  stages  in  the  development 
of  religion  is  the  epoch  when  religion  adopts  morals  as 
its  own  province,  and  when  the  gods  of  religion  take  on 
ethical  character.  This  is  so  distinctive  an  advance 
from  earlier  amoral  thoughts  of  God,  which  present 
him  simply  in  terms  of  nature-powers,  quite  as  likely  to 
be  evil  as  good,  that  most  classifications  of  historic 
religions  (Tiele's  especially)  mark  off  in  some  way  the 
"ethical  religions"  from  the  earlier  as  merely  "natural- 
istic" or  "objective."  How  do  the  judgments  arise 
that  God  is  good,  or  that  he  is  moral  ?  Is  it  not  rather 
that  he  is  found  favoring  the  good  of  men  and  the 
right  of  men,  than  that  he  is  himself  good  or  moral  in 
any  sense  in  which  we  attribute  these  terms  to  each 
other  ?  Immoral  or  malevolent,  God  cannot  be ;  but 
there  is  a  struggle  in  our  thought  of  God  between  the 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     331 

God  that  is  described  by  our  ideal  predicates,  and  that 
God  who  rejects  all  these  as  something  less  and  other 
than  the  truth.  And  here  again,  we  can  see  at  once 
that  the  problem  of  personality  and  impersonality  is 
involved. 

It  is  pertinent  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the 
God  who  merely  is,  as  our  Absolute  Other,  is  by  that 
fact  both  promotive  of  our  weal  and  of  our  morality. 
This  has  been  one  of  our  cardinal  doctrines.  In  our 
discussion  of  the  need  of  God  we  showed  in  some  detail 
how  the  mere  presence  of  a  companion  Mind,  standing 
outside  the  arena  of  human  effort  with  its  contrasts  of 
good  and  evil,  may  be  found,  in  experience,  to  transmute 
evil  into  good ;  that  while,  by  this  very  experience,  the 
companion  would  deserve  the  attribute  of  goodness,  yet 
this  standing  outside  the  arena  itself  is  a  necessary  con- 
dition of  his  being  found  all-powerful  in  this  trans- 
muting work.  It  is  not  otherwise  with  the  morality 
of  God.  Did  not  Jesus  of  Nazareth  preach  that  new 
conception  of  God's  justice  which  so  strongly  resembles 
an  indifferent  treatment  of  the  righteous  and  the 
unrighteous  ?  If  God  merely  is,  that  existence  of  God 
is  a  promotive  of  human  morality.  For  what  is  the 
essential  morality  of  man  if  not  this,  that  he  make 
himself  universal,  escaping  in  thought  and  act  from  his 
self-enclosedness  ?  If  God  were  but  a  point  external 
to  man's  consciousness,  and  if  man  could  reach  that 
point,  his  feat  in  doing  so  would  be  at  least  the  begin- 
ning of  morality.  The  moral  importance  of  God  in 
history  has  been  chiefly  dependent  on  the  relations 
which  man  has  sustained  to  his  gods  :  loyalty  to  a  god 
is  a  moral  relation ;  and  when  through  loyal  obedience 


332  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

to  a  common  god  men  become  loyal  to  fellow-tribesmen 
and  their  customs,  that  god  is  favoring  morality  among 
men,  quite  apart  from  any  mythical  reputation  he  may 
have.  In  finding  God  as  simply  existent  we  find  him, 
I  say,  both  good  and  righteous  in  his  activity ;  and  the 
condition  for  so  finding  him  is  that  he  himself  remain 
above  the  contrasts  of  good  and  evil. 

There  are  then,  we  believe,  no  pre-ethical  stages  of 
religion,  though  there  are  indeed  pre-legalistic  stages ; 
there  is  no  moment  at  which  God  in  his  totality  begins 
to  be  thought  of  as  good,  though  there  are  great 
moments  in  religious  development  when  specific  charac- 
ters of  God's  goodness  become  clear,  as  of  "  mercy  " 
and  "  loving-kindness  "  ;  and  finally,  there  are  no  such 
specific  predicates  of  good  that  do  not  stand  in  need, 
as  we  think  of  them,  of  being  tempered  with  contrast- 
ing qualities,  such  as  justice  and  universality.  The 
God-idea  must  advance  at  times  from  the  moral  to 
the  amoral,  as  well  as  in  the  reverse  direction.  But 
herewith  the  question  of  the  moral  attributes  of  God 
debouches  wholly  into  the  question  of  God's  personality. 
This  question  we  have  variously  encountered,  and  shall 
now  briefly  touch  upon  for  itself. 

We  have  found  God  in  the  first  place  as  an  Other 
Mind,  an  individual  Subject,  wholly  active :  and  no 
war  of  predicates  can  invade  this  certainty.  But  so 
large  are  the  differences  between  this  Other  Mind  and 
those  with  whom  we  commonly  converse,  that  we  do 
continually  recur  to  the  query,  How  shall  we  think  of 
Him  ?  We  are  baffled  and  not  foolishly  by  the  absence 
of  a  body  that  we  can  attribute  to  God ;  for  here  the 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     333 

perfect  metaphor  of  Nature  seems  to  break  —  there 
is  no  point  of  view  which  is  God's  in  particular,  and 
the  being  that  has  every  point  of  view  loses  to  us  all 
semblance  of  individuality.  "  0  that  I  knew  where  I 
might  find  Him." 

It  is  something  to  note  that  our  body  is  the  sign  of 
our  limitation,  and  of  our  dependence.  Our  body  is 
that  through  which  we  are  acted  upon  as  well  as  that 
through  which  we  •  act.  But  our  body  is  also  that 
through  which  we  are  found  and  become  personally 
present  to  other  persons.  The  abolition  of  body  is  the 
abolition  of  the  recognizable  and  the  understandable  in 
all  personal  relations. 

And  we  see,  too,  that  the  advance  of  religion  has 
been  very  largely  from  personality  to  impersonality. 
For  most  like  ourselves  are  those  early  souls,  doubles, 
shadows,  which  people  the  other  world.  Religion  must 
lose  that  literally  human  heaven,  and  its  human  gods, 
and  therewith  vanish  from  grasp  and  from  interest. 
The  alternative  to  the  thought  of  God  as  person  is  the 
thought  of  him  as  Substance,  as  Energy,  and  chiefly  as 
Law.  Brahmanism,  we  may  say,  finds  God  as  Substance, 
the  great  That  Which.  Buddhism,  often  accused  of 
having  no  supreme  god,  sometimes  described  as  the 
godless  religion,  has  also  its  Absolute  :  but  its  god  is 
the  Law,  the  law  of  Karma,  the  fixed  principle  of  justice 
in  the  heart  of  all  change.  Karma  is,  as  nearly  as 
possible,  a  "Moral  Order  of  the  Universe,"  in  which 
terms  —  though  with  quite  other  meaning  —  Fichte  de- 
scribed his  deity.  Emerson's  "  Spiritual  Laws  "  which 
are  alive  and  which  execute  themselves,  which  are  an- 
other name  for  his  Over-soul,  are  a  deity  of  not  unlike 


334  HOW  MEN  KNOW   GOD 

character.  The  Greek  Fate  and  Chaos,  the  Stoic  mate- 
rial Reason,  the  Chinese  Tao :  all  such  conceptions  of 
God,  are  they  not  the  enlightened  thoughts  of  men 
about  deity  ?  Have  we  not  said  but  lately  that  the  re- 
mote God  is  the  primary  necessity  of  religion  ? 

We  have  said  this ;  and  noted  at  that  time  that  man 
is  not  made  great  by  diminishing  the  majesty  of  his 
world.  In  the  same  spirit  we  may  now  say  that  man 
is  not  aggrandized  nor  freed  by  weakening  the  type  of 
his  world's  unity.  Just  as  we  could  not  enhance  our 
own  definiteness  by  blurring  the  definiteness  of  Nature, 
but  the  contrary  :  so  we  should  detract  from  our  own 
concreteness  in  any  detraction  from  the  concreteness  of 
our  world-unity,  and  in  our  thought  of  it.  There  is 
neither  merit  nor  truth  in  rarefying  the  thought  of  God; 
nor  in  presenting  him  to  our  conceptions  in  terms  of 
some  thinner  and  weaker  sort  of  world-unity  easier  to 
image  and  believe  in  than  a  personal  world-unity. 

It  is  God  in  external  relation  to  me,  as  my  Other, 
that  seems  the  personal  God ;  it  is  God  as  the  Whole, 
including  me  within  himself,  that  seems  impersonal : 
and  the  true  God  is  the  Whole,  as  in  Christian  doctrine 
God  is  the  One  of  the  three  persons.  But  we  may  dis- 
cern in  the  world  generally  a  principle  to  the  effect  that 
inner  relations  assimilate  themselves  to  outer  rela- 
tions, and  conversely.  Thus,  of  organisms,  the  whole 
cares  for  the  parts  in  the  same  sense  that  the  parts  may 
be  said  to  care  for  each  other  :  and  the  several  organs  of 
an  organism  do  tend  to  reproduce  in  themselves  the  fea- 
tures of  that  whole,  becoming  in  themselves  organisms 
with  internal  relations  resembling  their  own  outward 
relations.  Of  State  and  citizen  the  same  holds:  and 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE   KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     335 

whatever  the  character  of  the  State  in  its  international 
relations,  that  same  character  (be  it  of  Athenian  greed, 
or  of  Machiavellian  expediency,  or  of  better  sorts)  will 
reproduce  itself  in  the  character  of  the  members  of  the 
State.  Now  the  State  is  in  some  measure  an  artificial 
body,  and  its  moral  quality  lags  behind  the  qualities  of 
its  members.  But  the  World  is  not  artificial:  the  char- 
acter of  the  World  is  first,  —  that  of  its  members  de- 
rivative. We  may  find  our  thought  of  God  following 
in  arrear  of  the  best  conception  we  have  of  ourselves; 
but  it  is  only  because  we  know  that  whatever  selfhood 
we  have  is  an  involution  of  the  selfhood  of  the  Whole, 
and  that  our  external  relations  to  our  fellows  do  but 
follow  and  reproduce  in  their  own  more  distant  fashion 
the  relation  of  God  to  us  which  from  his  view  is  inter- 
nal. Hence  the  remark  that  "  Man  is  never  long  con- 
tent to  worship  gods  of  moral  character  greatly  inferior 
to  his  own  "  l  may  be  accepted,  with  its  sting  drawn, 
because  of  what  we  know  of  our  relation  to  the  Whole 
of  which  we  are  natural  parts. 

The  conception  of  God  as  Law  has  its  right  in 
destroying  the  poverty  of  my  thought  of  personality. 
I  confess  that  this  word  "person"  has  for  me  a  harsh 
and  rigid  sound,  smacking  of  the  Roman  Code.  I  do 
not  love  the  word  personality.  I  want  whatever  is 
accidental  and  arbitrary  and  atomic  and  limited  and 
case-hardened  about  that  conception  to  be  persistently 
beaten  and  broken  by  whatever  of  God  I  can  see  in  the 
living  law  and  order  of  this  Universe  until  it  also  has 
all  such  totality  and  warmth. 

But  I  see  that  personality  is  a  stronger  idea  than  law ; 

1  McDougall.     Social  Psychology,  p.  311.    2d  edition. 


336  HOW  MEN  KNOW  GOD 

and  has  promise  of  mutuality  and  intercourse  that  laws, 
even  if  living,  cannot  afford.  I  see  further  that  person- 
ality can  include  law,  as  law  cannot  include  personality. 
And  I  see,  finally,  that  this  deepening  conception  of 
personality  is  not  more  an  ideal  than  an  experience. 
For  God  is  not  falsely  judged  in  experience  to  be  both 
the  one  and  the  other.  The  negation  of  any  one  such 
attribute  by  the  other  is  only  for  the  enlargement  of 
the  first,  not  for  its  destruction.  Until  I  can  perfectly 
conceive  personality,  God  must  be  for  me  alternately 
person  and  law;  with  the  knowledge  that  these  two 
attributes  of  one  being  are  not,  in  truth,  inconsistent, 
and  that  their  mode  of  union  is  also  something  that  I 
shall  verify  in  some  moment  of  present  knowledge,  as  by 
anticipation  of  an  ultimate  attainment.  Not  only  is  God 
to  be  found  in  experience,  but  whatever  attributes  are 
genuinely  predicated  of  him  are  to  be  found  there  also. 
God  is  the  Eternal  Substance,  and  is  known  as  such; 
God  is  also  the  Eternal  Order  of  things :  but  God  is 
That  Which  does  whatever  Substance  is  found  to  do. 
If  it  is  the  knowledge  of  God  that  first  gives  us  our 
human  comradeship  and  its  varied  and  satisfying  respon- 
siveness, the  God  who  is  the  bearer  of  that  responsiveness 
is  not  himself  without  response.  These  comrades  are  in 
a  measure  God's  organs  of  response,  even  as  Nature  is 
God's  announcement  of  his  presence  and  individuality: 
but  God  has  also  a  responsiveness  of  his  own,  and  herein 
lies  the  immediate  experience  of  the  personality  of  God. 
The  relations  between  man  and  God  have,  in  the  course 
of  religious  history,  become  more  deeply  personal  and 
passionate,  with  the  deepening  sense  of  evil  and  spiritual 
distress.  The  soul  finds  at  length  its  divine  companion. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  GOD     337 

But  as  religion  enters  into  these  deeper  and  more  fertile 
strata  of  the  knowledge  of  God,  it  becomes  evident 
that  the  development  of  religion  falls  increasingly  upon 
the  shoulders  of  individual  men,  whose  experience  of 
God  and  its  cognitive  content  becomes  authoritative  for 
/others.  We  find  that  religion  becomes  universal  at 
the  same  time  that  it  becomes  most  peculiarly  personal, 
and  takes  its  impetus  and  name  from  individual  founders 
and  prophets.  Buddhism  and  Christianity  and  Islam 
are  religions  of  redemption  and  of  universal  propagan- 
dism ;  and  it  is  they,  chiefly,  that  willingly  refer  their 
character  and  revelation  of  God  to  one  person.  Our 
understanding  of  the  higher  stages  of  the  knowledge 
of  God,  so  far  as  man  has  yet  progressed  in  this  knowl- 
edge, will  best  be  pursued  in  a  closer  study  of  mysticism 
and  worship. 


PART  V 
WORSHIP  AND   THE    MYSTICS 


CHAPTER   XXIV 
THOUGHT    AND    WORSHIP 

WORSHIP,  or  prayer,  is  the  especial  sphere  of  the  ; 
will  in  religion.  It  is  an  act  of  approach  lo 
God:  and  while  this  act  involves  a  lifting  of  thought 
to  God,  it  is  more  than  an  act  of  thought — it  intends  to 
institute  some  communication  or  transaction  with  God 
wherein  will  answers  will. 

What  this  transaction  may  signify  it  is  not  easy  to 
understand.  Prayer  is  instinctive;  and  as  with  all 
instinctive  actions  its  motive  lies  deeper  than  any  obvious 
utility:  our  attempts  at  explanation  are  likely  to  leave 
its  ultimate  meaning  uncaught.  The  motive  of  worship 
may  seem  to  be  moral  —  an  impulse  of  deference  to  the 
great  and  holy  and  a  desire  to  share  in  that  holiness ;  or 
we  may  think  to  discern  an  end  more  deliberately^racfo'ca?, 
as  when  prayer  takes  the  form  of  propitiation  or  petition: 
yet  all  such  moral  and  practical  motives  are  but  appur- 
tenances of  the  primary  motive,  which  as  yet  we  must 
simply  call  religious  —  allowing  its  rightful  uniqueness 
and  problematic  character.  Worship,  we  may  say,  is 
governed  by  the  "love  of  God"  -  whatever  this  mys- 
terious phrase  may  mean.  In  so  far  as  love  seeks 
knowledge  of  its  object,  worship  resembles  thinking :  yet 
love  seeks  its  knowledge  by  its  own  way  and  method, 
characteristically  different  from  the  way  of  reflection: 
it  is  these  differences  which  are  now  important  to  us. 


342  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

For  philosophy,  in  its  rightful  and  necessary  effort  to 
do  justice  to  the  religious  idea  in  contrast  to  a  religion 
of  feeling,  is  inclined  to  halt  in  the  world  of  thought, 
unable  to  see  what  more  than  thinking  may  be  involved 
in  the  act  of  prayer.  Recognizing  that  idea  is  neces- 
sary, it  assumes  that  deliberate  reflection  is  sufficient. 
It  identifies  Gottesdienst  with  Denken,  and  thereby 
impoverishes  the  meaning  of  worship. 

Worship  is  indeed  a  reasonable  act,  even  when 
instinctive  and  momentary  :  it  is  informed  of  God ;  it 
uses  and  contains  all  available  knowledge  of  the  being 
whom  it  addresses.  But  in  worship  the  universality  of 
thought  is  overcome ;  and  God  is  appropriated  uniquely 
to  the  individual  self.  Worship  brings  the  experience 
of  God  to  pass  in  self-consciousness  with  a  searching 
valency  not  obligatory  upon  the  pure  thinker :  in  some 
way  it  enacts  the  presence  of  God,  sets  God  into  the 
will  to  work  there.  In  the  nature  of  the  case,  the 
aspect  of  deity  which  reason  discovers  is  an  uncondi- 
tional, inevitable,  universal  presence:  from  such  a 
presence  there  can  be  no  escape — and  so  no  drawing 
near — save  by  the  movements  of  deliberate  attention. 
But  the  drawing-near  of  worship  is  more  than  a 
movement  of  attention. 

Our  philosophical  thought  finds  God  as  an  object  — 
in  the  third  person,  not  in  the  second.  Thinking  comes 
upon  God  in  a  contemplation  which  the  sound  of  the 
word  "  Thou  "  would  break  and  startle.  There  is  here 
some  spell  of  distance,  some  veil  of  insulation,  from 
which  natural  religion  does  not  suffer.  In  worship,  not 
alone  the  universality,  but  also  the  objectivity  proper  to 
deliberate  thought  must  be  accepted — and  overcome. 


THOUGHT  AND  WORSHIP  343 

Our  moral  freedom  consists  in  this,  that  in  knowing 
God  we  maintain  a  moment  of  reserve;  the  further 
relation  requires  a  further  consent.  And  in  the  consent 
which  distinguishes  the  act  of  worship,  objectivity,  the 
otherness  of  God  and  man,  ceases  to  be  the  whole  truth 
of  that  relationship. 

What  this  further  element  may  be,  we  shall  for  the 
present  simply  illustrate.  We  are  well  acquainted  with 
the  difference  between  the  observer  of  life  and  the 
sharer  of  it.  We  know  the  man  to  whom  nature,  for 
instance,  is  a  foreign  and  independent  spectacle,  and 
the  man  who  in  the  presence  of  nature  readily  becomes 
a  part  of  all  that  is  around  him.  We  know  the  man  who 
in  all  social  situations  maintains  some  fine  insulation, 
some  predominance  of  the  self-preserving  instinct ;  and 
we  know  the  man  whose  self  spontaneously  diffuses  and 
mingles  with  each  situation  by  some  natural  osmosis 
between  him  and  his  object.  And  we  know  further 
that  while  the  former  temper  has  a  certain  advantage 
in  discoursing  about  its  world,  the  latter  temper  though 
less  fluent  in  speech  does  win  a  kind  of  knowledge  of 
its  world  which  the  less  adventurous  and  more  objective 
temper  may  wholly  fail  to  understand.  We  experience 
these  varieties  of  temper  in  ourselves,  and  know  well 
that  while  this  consent  is  sometimes  in  our  power,  at 
other  times  even  this  touch  of  freedom  which  makes  us 
one  with  our  object  seems  to  have  drifted  beyond  our 
present  grasp.  And  though  this  difference  has  cogni- 
tive consequences,  we  are  inclined  to  refer  it  at  last  to 
an  attitude  of  will,  to  a  moral  difference  which  in  its 
beginnings  is  under  voluntary  control.  In  any  case  we 
recognize  here  an  other-than-theoretical  relation  to  our 


344  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

object,  a  relation  which  surmounts  objectivity  without 
destroying  it,  and  which  is  seen  quite  simply  in  that 
transition  in  consciousness  from  "  he  "  to  "  thou,"  and 
from  "  thou  "  to  "  we." 

These  two  aspects  of  our  living  belong  together.  As 
we  have  just  now  compared  the  two  tempers — of  isola- 
tion from  our  objects  and  of  fusion  with  them  —  we 
recognize  that  neither  would  be  significant  without  the 
other.  Distance  without  fusion  becomes  individualistic 
and  sterile;  fusion  without  distance  is  formless,  senti- 
mental, and  oppressive.  We  want  our  living  to  add  to 
its  objectivity  this  unifying  consent ;  but  we  want  no 
consent  save  of  one  who  in  thought  has  made  himself 
free.  Consent,  and  that  union  with  the  object  so 
curiously  uncommandable  by  direct  effort,  flows  through 
and  around  all  our  deliberate  thought-work,  lifting  and 
floating  it  on  the  tide  of  a  more  central  relationship 
with  our  world.  Keflective  thought,  it  appears,  is  too 
purposive,  active,  self-distinguishing,  self -preserving, 
and  at  the  same  time  too  unindividual  and  unfree  in 
its  result,  to  do  justice  to  the  meaning  of  worship. 

The  discrepancy  between  these  two  processes  appears 
most  vividly  when  we  consider  their  historical  aspect. 
If  we  identify  the  essence  of  worship  with  thinking, 
then  whatever  else  has  been  historically  associated  with 
worship  by  way  of  external  action,  ceremonial  form, 
and  the  like,  is  set  aside  as  accidental,  as  something 
with  which  the  man  of  thought  may  dispense,  as  some- 
thing with  which  civilization  itself  will  dispense  in  time. 
From  this  point  of  view,  historical  worship  has  two  ele- 
ments :  reflection  (which  is  important)  and  rite  (which 


THOUGHT  AND  WORSHIP  345 

is  relatively  unimportant),  the  merely  practical  aspect 
of  religion,  making  use  of  the  knowledge  of  God  but 
adding  nothing  to  it.  These  practices,  as  we  now  see, 
are  not  only  untheoretical — they  are  even  peculiarly 
unpractical :  here  is  a  great  accretion  of  activities,  not 
turned  outward  into  the  world,  but  directed  upward 
and  disappearing  in  their  energies,  like  the  fire  of  sacri- 
fice, in  an  unanswered  gesture  of  aspiration  —  unan- 
swered, unexplained,  though  seemingly  undiscouraged. 
This  external  part  of  worship  is  the  exclamatory  or 
demonstrative  side  of  religion  ;  it  is  religion  vaunting 
itself,  celebrating  itself,  decorating  itself,  —  and  in  the 
process  of  time  these  externalities,  once  pedagogically 
or  socially  useful,  become  unnecessary. 

But  our  historic  conscience  has  been  making  us  aware 
that  this  line  of  cleavage  between  the  important  and  the 
unimportant  in  religion  is  badly  drawn.  It  produces  a 
conception  of  religion  which  is  in  much  danger  of  omit- 
ting religion  itself.  For  religion  has  always  assumed 
that  there  is  something  in  particular  to  be  done  about 
God ;  and  has  identified  itself  with  the  work  of  doing 
it.  It  has  assembled  religious  practices  into  institu- 
tions—  systems  of  just  such  special  activities;  it  has 
spent  itself  in  perfecting  and  establishing  them;  and 
what  a  spectacle  do  these  structures  constitute  as  they 
heap  themselves  in  history.  What  will  our  philosophies 
make  of  this  rank  growth  of  deed,  ceremony,  orgy, 
assembly,  ritual,  sacrifice,  sacrament,  observances  pub- 
lic and  private  of  a  thousand  sorts  ?  Is  all  this  to  be 
left  as  an  alien  mass?  are  these  performances  and 
experiences  to  be  turned  over  chiefly  to  the  student  of 
abnormal  psychology?  If  in  the  presence  of  these 


346  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

phenomena  of  religious  practice  our  most  lively  sense 
is  a  sense  of  the  erratic,  do  we  not  thereby  measure 
the  inadequacy  of  our  understanding?  Must  not  the 
mere  bulk  and  persistence  of  this  aspect  of  religion 
convey  some  impression  of  importance  ;  and  still  more 
so,  the  intensity  of  spirit  with  which  it  has  been  carried 
on?  Our  eliminations  of  the  unimportant  in  religion 
must  mightily  reduce  this  mass,  no  doubt ;  but  it  will 
not  all  be  cut  away  from  religion.  Something  which  is 
other  than  reflective  thought  will  appear  as  an  essential 
ingredient  of  worship.  And  perhaps  a  rapid  survey  of 
these  historic  phenomena  may  suggest  what  this  essen- 
tial ingredient  is.  We  shall  find  religion,  perhaps, 
making  its  own  selection. 

There  is  no  moment  in  the  early  history  of  religion 
when  this  active,  vocative  side  of  worship  is  without  its 
own  distinct  importance,  real  or  supposed.  If  man's 
religion  is  first  embodied  in  his  exclamations,  these 
exclamations  were  at  once  cognitions  and  prayers,  incip- 
ient transactions.  God-friendly  and  God-unfriendly 
are  distinguishable  even  here;  and  God-unfriendly  can 
be  made  God-friendly.  What  consequences  may  hang 
from  this  practical  issue  of  the  friendliness  of  God  is 
not  clear  —  early  theories  are  no  better  than  our  own  : 
the  imagination  exhausts  itself  in  picturing  the  divine 
rewards  and  punishments ;  but  behind  all  these  pictures 
there  is,  even  from  the  beginning,  a  residual  import- 
ance in  being  right  with  deity  which  we  might  call  an 
ontological  importance,  i.  e.,  affecting  somehow  the 
substance  of  one's  self,  the  soul  and  its  destiny,  open- 
ing up  some  bottomless  depths  of  being  such  as  the  eye 
is  hardly  fitted  to  gaze  into.  The  amount  of  power 


THOUGHT  AND   WORSHIP  347 

that  can  be  released  when  the  religious  nerve  is  pressed 
is  quite  out  of  proportion  to  the  belief  in  the  more 
definable  pleasures  and  pains.  Let  political  and  legal 
needs  make  the  most  of  this  superstitious  potency  while 
it  lasts.  To  keep  God  friendly  there  are  few  efforts 
that  men  will  not  make,  few  privations  that  they  will 
not  undergo.  It  is  but  a  trifling  symbol  of  such  efforts 
and  privations  that  the  god  requires  a  deliberate  and 
methodical  approach  in  sacrifices  and  prayer ;  whatever 
importance  religion  has  begins  to  concentrate  in  the 
special  act  of  worship. 

But  these  necessary  moments  of  approach  have  their 
own  terrors,  when  some  one  must  take  it  upon  him- 
self to  break  through  the  habitual  taboo  of  Holiness ; 
a  cloud  of  oppressive  gravity  deepens  over  the  event, 
supportable  only  by  fierce  resolution,  wrapped  probably 
in  mutilation  and  blood.  And  when  the  act  is  accom- 
plished in  safety,  an  exultancy  equally  fierce  floods  the 
brain  ;  exhibitions  of  savage  gaiety,  the  license  of  super- 
men, can  alone  satisfy  the  spirit.  We  are  strangers 
now  to  this  vehemence,  whether  for  better  or  for  worse ; 
but  we  can  still  catch  from  afar  the  pulse  of  this  ancient 
ocean,  its  terrors  and  its  glorious  liberations.  We  can 
understand  how  this  strange  sense  of  ontological  im- 
portance must  condense  in  any  phase  of  human  experi- 
ence in  which  the  actual  remoteness  of  deity  seemed 
overcome.  We  shall  expect  it  to  set  excessive  value 
upon  those  states  of  enthusiasm,  ecstasy,  intoxication, 
in  which  heaven  and  earth  were  felt  to  flow  together ; 
and  to  raise  into  prominence  persons  specially  apt 
in  the  arts  of  worship,  quite  apart  from  any  other 
human  capacity  that  these  persons  might  have  or  lack. 


348  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

Thus   the  system  of  worship   develops  its  adepts, — 
its  mystics. 

Judging  externally,  from  the  qualities  of  dervish dom, 
yoginism,  devoteeship  and  sainthood  generally,  all  these 
special  achievements  of  approach  to  God  might  be 
regarded  as  the  luxury  or  extravagance  of  the  religious 
consciousness,  were  it  not  that  they  have  been  regarded 
by  religion  as  in  some  form  and  degree  its  chief  neces- 
sity. Religion  (which  in  any  given  people  lives  more  or 
less  as  a  single  body)  seems  to  breathe  chiefly  through 
the  experience  of  individuals  who  carry  to  its  highest 
the  art  of  personal  worship  :  the  Brahmin  becomes  holy 
because  the  act  of  prayer  (Brahman)  is  holy.  The  value 
of  the  saint,  to  all  appearances,  must  lie  in  the  simple 
fact  that  he  knows  how  to  communicate  with  God ;  this 
simple  fact  gives  to  his  look,  his  gait,  his  way  of  judg- 
ing events,  the  sentences  that  fall  from  his  lips,  an 
unaccountable  weight.  Of  substantial  result  not  much 
more  can  be  extracted  from  these  persons;  not  much 
more  has  been  demanded  of  them.  Their  art  of  dealing 
with  the  god  has  been  a  matter  of  wonder  not  to  the 
people  only,  but  to  themselves  as  well ;  they  have  diffi- 
culty in  communicating  either  that  art  or  its  significant 
fruits  to  the  religious  public.  They  do  not  mix  well, 
these  mystics :  they  must  live  as  objects  to  the  crowd, 
solitary  often,  often  in  exclusive  groups  of  like-minded 
spirits,  willing  and  able  to  accept  from  each  other  large 
meanings  on  small  suggestions,  leaping  to  some  substance 
through  a  swirl  of  dizzy  symbol.  It  is  this  difficulty  of 
communication,  this  separation  from  the  mass  in  thought 
and  habit,  this  embarrassment  of  speech,  which  has 
embodied  itself  in  the  word  mysticism. 


THOUGHT  AND  WORSHIP  349 

The  suspicion  of  unreality  and  of  pious  distemper 
which  this  name  must  always  bear  is  a  monument,  not 
all  unjust,  to  the  vanity  of  those  who  first  adopted  it, 
as  if  their  esoteric  knowledge  and  privilege  with  deity, 
this  circumstance  of  separation  from  the  rest  of  men, 
were  the  essence  of  their  art,  and  wholly  a  matter  for 
congratulation.  But  it  matters  not  to  us  if  some  or 
even  most  prophets  have  been  vain  or  false,  if  there 
are  any  true  prophets.  In  this,  as  in  other  great  mat- 
ters, nature  makes  a  thousand  failures  to  bring  forth 
one  consummate  product.  The  existence  of  the  gen- 
uine mystic  —  Bernard,  Mohammed,  Lao  Tze,  Plotinus, 
Eckhart,  John  of  the  Cross  —  however  seldom  he  is 
found,  is  the  momentous  thing ;  sufficient  to  command 
respect  for  the  tradition  of  mysticism,  sufficient  to  jus- 
tify the  attention  which  through  religious  history  has 
been  focussed  upon  these  individuals. 

For  the  mysteries  and  the  mystics  have  in  the  course 
of  time  distilled  into  their  own  tradition  the  essence  of 
religious  practice.  They  know,  if  any  know,  how  it  is 
that  the  knowledge  of  God  can  be  the  most  universal 
of  perceptions,  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  rare  and 
difficult.  They  know  wherein  the  act  of  prayer  differs 
from  an  act  of  reflective  thought.  A  philosophy  of 
mysticism  would  be  a  philosophy  of  worship. 


NOTE  ON  THE  MEANING  OF  MYSTICISM  1 

WHEN  we  speak  of  mysticism  we  have  now  before  our 
mind  a  great  historic  phenomenon,  found  everywhere 
that  religion  is  found :  for  as  there  is  no  religion  without 
worship,  so  there  is  no  religion  without  its  specialists  in 
worship.  And  a  survey  of  the  modes  of  approach  to  God 
practised  by  the  mystics  in  all  ages  seems  to  confirm  our 
distinction  between  worship  and  the  usual  processes  of 
thought.  In  these  strange  courtings  of  frenzy,  ecstasy, 
intoxication;  in  these  traps  set  for  the  inspiring  deity, 
preparations  elaborate,  demonstrative,  fantastic,  inhuman  at 
times,  we  see  little  external  resemblance  to  the  quieter 
processes  of  reflection. 

Yet,  as  the  methods  of  devotion  clarify;  as  excitement 
learns  its  own  due  channels,  finding  assuagement  in  art  and 
ceremonial  dignity ;  and  especially  as  worship  recovers  a  right 
to  private  as  well  as  to  public  pursuit ;  worship  approximates 
meditation,  even  externally.  Worship  takes  on  the  aspect  of 
a  more  deliberate,  intense,  and  thorough  thinking.  In  thought 
as  in  worship,  I  must  to  some  extent  remove  myself  from  the 
current  of  experience,  from  "  appearances  "  ;  I  must  stop  the 
intrusions  of  sense,  and  check  the  prepossessions  of  habitual 
idea.  Further,  in  thought  as  in  worship,  I  must  yield  myself 
to  my  object  and  identify  my  being  for  the  time  with  its  own. 
Worship,  then,  is  but  the  completion,  is  it  not,  of  these  par- 
tial works  of  common  thought?  and  true  worship  will  issue 
in  true  knowledge,  as  its  essential  result  and  aim.  What 

1  Readers  whose  eye  may  have  fallen  upon  an  article  in  Mind,  Janu- 
ary 1912,  on  "  The  meaning  of  mysticism  as  seen  through  its  psychology," 
will  perhaps  recognize  in  this  note  and  in  some  of  the  following  chapters 
disjecta  membra  of  that  article,  much  revised. 


ON  THE  MEANING  OF  MYSTICISM  351 

this  knowledge  is,  the  mystics  will  report  as  their  peculiar 
discovery. 

Thus  some  of  the  greater  mystics  and  schools  of  mysticism 
have  actually  reduced  worship  back  again  to  thinking,  con- 
templation, reflection ;  and  have  represented  the  end  of  wor- 
ship as  a  personal  knowledge  of  God,  or  even  as  a  doctrine 
about  God.  To  the  Vedantist,  thought  becomes  the  true 
sacrifice,  equivalent  to  and  replacing  all  other  sacrifices.  The 
only  art  of  the  mystic  is  after  all  an  art  of  knowing,  difficult 
perhaps,  but  not  different  in  character  from  other  thought. 
Naturally,  then,  we  might  expect  the  doctrines  of  the  mystics 
to  approach  a  common  type ;  and  we  might  better  identify 
mysticism  with  its  cognitive  result  than  with  any  peculiar  act 
of  will  deserving  the  special  name  of  worship.  Such  has 
been,  in  fact,  the  fortune  of  mysticism :  in  so  far  as  the 
mystics  have  presented  their  results  systematically  they  have 
tended  to  a  common  type  of  metaphysical  theory;  and  the 
name  mysticism  has  become  attached  to  a  well-known  and 
well-refuted  doctrine  about  the  nature  of  God,  or  of  Reality. 
In  the  refutation  of  that  doctrine  the  excuse  for  worship  as 
a  peculiar  esoteric  art  of  thinking  disappears,  and  practical 
religion  merges  itself  with  philosophical  thought. 

Thus,  when  Royce  writes  of  mysticism  he  treats  it  as  one 
of  the  four  leading  types  of  metaphysical  system,  identified 
with  the  doctrine  that  reality  is  pure  unity,  the  negation  of  all 
appearances  and  pluralities,  immediate  therefore  and  ineffable. 
Of  this  doctrine  Royce  exhibits  the  emptiness  in  wholly  con- 
clusive argument :  speculative  mysticism  needs  no  more  refu- 
tation, and  shall  have  none  here.  And  we  may  the  more 
willingly  refrain  from  further  criticism  since  our  own  view  of 
reality  which  excludes  that  one  is  already  before  us. 

But  unquestionably  we  restrict  our  view  of  historical  mysti- 
cism in  identifying  it  with  this  result :  mysticism  has  been  a 
much  broader  thing  than  this  type  of  metaphysics.  Not  all 
mystics  have  been  independent  speculators  ;  and  not  all  spec- 
ulators among  the  mystics  have  conformed  to  this  type.  If 


352  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

mysticism  is  found  in  all  religions,  it  must  be  found  avowing 
every  conceivable  variety  of  metaphysics ;  every  variety,  that 
is,  consistent  with  its  one  necessary  postulate,  that  reality  may 
be,  and  ought  to  be,  approached  in  worship.  Christianity, 
for  instance,  is  the  home  of  much  mysticism,  even  of  the  best; 
yet  Christianity  does  not  profess  the  "  negative  metaphysics  "  ; 
it  is  the  express  foe  of  the  "  abstract  universal,"  for  its  God 
has  once  for  all  sanctioned  the  world  of  appearances  by  becom- 
ing flesh  and  dwelling  among  us.  Nor  have  the  Christian 
mystics  as  a  body  been  at  war  with  their  creed.  It  is  to  be 
presumed  that  the  meaning  of  the  mystics  is  compatible  with 
truth,  whatever  that  may  be ;  and  is  itself  therefore  independ- 
ent of  any  passing  theory  of  it.  We  cannot  then  predeter- 
mine the  meaning  and  fate  of  mysticism  by  identifying  it  with 
a  doomed  metaphysics.  We  shall  judge  mysticism  first  by 
the  mystics,  not  by  the  theories  of  a  few :  and  the  agreement 
of  the  mystics  lies  in  that  fact,  prior  to  doctrine,  and  wholly 
coextensive  with  religion,  the  practice  of  union  with  God  in 
a  special  act  of  worship. 

While  we  cannot  attach  the  meaning  of  historic  mysticism 
to  any  one  result  of  thought,  it  remains  true  that  the  art  of 
the  mystic  is  closely  allied  with  the  art  of  thinking.  We  can- 
not fairly  explain  worship  as  a  developed  and  extended  process 
of  reflection  ;  but  we  may  yet  find  that  thinking  is  definable 
as  a  partial  worship.  Worship  has  its  own  way  of  reaching 
wisdom,  and  must  certainly  make  for  truth  rather  than  for 
error.  But  if  this  is  the  case,  how  can  we  account  for  the 
undoubted  tendency  of  various  important  schools  of  mysticism 
to  converge  upon  that  falsely  abstract  metaphysics  ? 

This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  explanation  :  that  the  mystic  in 
reporting  what  he  has  experienced  has  attributed  to  the  objects 
of  his  experience  some  qualities  which  belong  rather  to  his 
own  inner  state.  To  distinguish  between  what  is  subjective 
and  what  is  objective  about  our  experience  is  frequently 
difficult,  even  in  physical  observation ;  but  especially  in  the 


ON  THE  MEANING  OF  MYSTICISM  353 

experience  of  the  mystic,  the  objects  are  difficult  to  grasp, 
while  the  inner  event  is  comparatively  tangible.  It  would  be 
strange  if  there  were  not  a  general  tendency  to  mistake  one 
for  the  other.  Let  me  enlarge  a  little  upon  this  point. 

The  mystic  prays ;  and  wins,  if  he  is  right,  some  answer  to 
his  prayer  which  is  significant  to  him.  He  has  won  knowl- 
edge, and  such  knowledge  as  he  thinks  reflection  could  hardly 
have  brought  him ;  but  he  cannot  say  exactly  what  it  is. 
Nothing  is  more  notorious  about  the  mystic's  knowledge  than 
its  inarticulateness.  The  mystic  himself  knows  that  his  insight 
is  unfinished  and  unsatisfactory,  even  while  he  declares  his 
experience  to  be  one  of  perfect  satisfaction.  "  The  soul  knows 
not  what  that  God  is  she  feels,"  says  Corderius.  Curiously 
helpless  and  plastic  is  this  knowledge:  able  to  live  under 
various  theological  systems  just  because  it  needs  some  help 
from  the  environment  to  determine  what  it  is.1  It  is  not 
without  an  independent  force  of  reaction  upon  the  conceptions 
it  uses ;  but  without  these  conceptions  to  give  it  voice,  it  could 
scarcely  win  strength  to  react  on  them.  And  as  the  mystic 
has  been  hard  put  to  it  to  tell  what  it  is  that  he  knows,  he  has 
in  our  later  and  Western  world  had  increasing  recourse  to 
reporting  the  psychology  of  his  experience,  in  lieu  of  its  cog- 
nitive contents.  Indeed,  he  has  not  only  used  psychology,  but 
has  made  it  for  his  own  purposes. 

And  unquestionably  the  reputation  of  mysticism  in  this 
world  would  have  suffered  less  if  our  mystics  could  earlier  and 
more  completely  have  commanded  this  psychological  mode  of 
expression.  Objective-mindedness  is  the  great  merit  of  all 
original  religion  ;  but  the  long-standing  inability  to  distinguish 
between  the  characters  of  an  experience  as  a  temporal  inner 
state  and  the  characters  of  its  object  has  cost  religion  much. 
Is  it  not  more  than  probable  that  those  words  "  one,  immediate, 
ineffable  "  which  describe  the  Reality  of  the  '*  negative  meta- 
physics," are  in  their  first  intention  descriptions  of  the  mystic's 
inner  experience  ?  May  it  not  be  that  those  negations  which 
1  See  Hoffdiug.  Philosophy  of  Religion,  p.  178  ff. 


354  WORSHIP   AND  THE  MYSTICS 

have  passed  for  metaphysical  definitions  are  in  their  original 
meaning  rather  confessions  of  mental  obstruction  and  difficulty 
than  assertions  about  the  Absolute  ?  There  is  a  wide  differ- 
ence between  saying,  "  My  experience  of  Reality  is  ineffable  " 
(passing  my  present  powers  of  expression)  and  saying 
"  Reality  is  ineffable  "  (without  predicates).  As  a  report  of 
procedure  and  experience  Reality  may  be  that  which  one 
realizes  when  he  cuts  himself  off  from  "  appearances,"  closes 
as  far  as  may  be  the  avenues  of  sense,  silences  the  cataract  of 
ideas,  and  withdraws  his  mind  into  its  deepest  cave :  in  such 
manner  it  may  be  that  the  central  unity  of  the  soul  meets 
the  central  unity  of  the  world,  and  knows  it  to  be  one  with 
itself.  And  yet,  this  report  of  experience  is  not  to  be  forth- 
with translated  as  a  complete  account  of  Reality.  I  must 
abstract  myself  also  to  think ;  but  what  I  think  is  not  therefore 
an  abstraction. 

Something  of  the  character  of  that  experience  must  indeed 
belong  to  its  object.  If  there  were  no  contrast  in  reality 
between  the  one  and  the  many,  between  the  substance  and  its 
appearances,  between  its  indescribable  and  its  describable 
aspects,  then  an  experience  which  was  "  one,  immediate,  and 
ineffable  "  would  find  simply  nothing  in  the  world  to  light 
upon.  But  he  who  would  deny  that  such  an  experience  can 
discover  anything  real  must  be  prepared  to  abolish  the  reality 
of  substance.  The  mystic  cannot  find  the  whole  of  reality, 
but  he  may  find  its  center ;  he  may  find  the  only  handle  by 
which  the  whole  can  be  held  as  a  unity. 

And  this  is  the  advantage  of  psychology  in  dealing  with 
mysticism,  that  it  is  non-committal  in  regard  to  the  cognitive 
or  other  possible  importance  of  an  experience,  and  may  yet 
furnish  the  clue  to  such  meaning.  For  where  self-expression 
falters  the  signs  of  meaning  may  still  be  read  in  causes  and 
effects.  The  immediacy  of  any  experience  must  submit  to 
interpretation  by  what  is  outside  it  and  related  to  it.  The 
logic  and  the  psychology  of  our  experiences  are  so  adjusted 
that  what  becomes  invisible  to  one  becomes  visible  to  the  other. 


ON  THE  MEANING  OF  MYSTICISM  355 

It  is  possible  that  the  thread  of  meaning,  lost  though  it  may 
be  to  the  mystic  himself  in  his  ecstatic  moment,  may  at  that 
very  moment  appear,  so  to  speak,  on  the  reverse  of  the  cloth, 
as  something  then  and  there  happening  to  the  substance  of 
the  mystic  himself ;  justifying  his  sense  of  the  "ontological 
importance  "  of  that  event. 

This  implies,  of  course,  that  the  "  immediacy "  of  the 
mystic  experience  has  its  external  relations  ;  and  this  impli- 
cation I  fully  accept  and  shall  try  to  justify.  Some  part  of 
the  meaning  of  this  experience  is  to  be  discovered  in  its 
external  career.  For  which  reason,  not  only  the  psycholo- 
gist, but  such  other  scientists  as  like  him  see  mysticism  in  its 
outer  bearings,  the  historian,  the  sociologist,  have  been  quicker 
than  the  metaphysician  to  recognize  its  vital  importance  in 
religion. 

Mysticism,  then,  we  shall  define  not  by  its  doctrine  but 
by  its  deed,  the  deed  of  worship  in  its  fully  developed  form. 
Nothing  concerns  us  more  than  to  know  what  that  experience 
means,  and  what  it  may  add  to  our  knowledge  of  God :  but 
we  shall  not  foreclose  these  questions  by  taking  a  finished 
speculative  system  into  our  definition  of  mysticism.  Mysticism 
is  a  way  of  dealing  with  God,  having  cognitive  and  other  fruit, 
affecting  first  the  mystic's  being  and  then  his  thinking,  afford- 
ing him  thereby  answers  to  prayer  which  he  can  distinguish 
from  the  results  of  his  own  reflection.  Since  the  Pseudo- 
Dionysius,  "  mystical  theology "  has  not  meant  a  rival 
theology,  but  rather  an  "  experimental  wisdom,"  having  its 
own  methods  and  its  own  audacious  intention  of  meeting 
deity  face  to  face. 


CHAPTER   XXV 

PRELIMINARY   DOUBTS   OF  THE  WORTH   OF 
WORSHIP 

BUT  can  we  find  anything  in  ourselves  to  corroborate 
that  sense  of  "  ontological  importance "  which 
formerly  attended  the  processes  of  worship  ?  To  attain 
union  with  God  in  a  mystical  experience,  other  than  in 
thoughtful  attention  to  the  mysteries  of  self-conscious- 
ness and  existence  :  we  can  no  longer  take  it  for  granted 
that  there  is  any  superior  worth  in  this,  or  indeed  any 
worth  at  all.  To  our  present  ethical  and  immanental 
mind,  it  is  necessary  to  show  cause  why  any  distinctive 
practices  for  religion  should  exist.  To  find  God  in 
personal  intercourse  and  business  is  enough,  is  it  not  ? 
—  the  religion  of  daily  life  and  duty  is  the  important 
thing.  Let  us  approach  God  through  these  many 
mediators  —  convenient  mediators,  requiring  no  devia- 
tion from  our  reasonable  plans.  Further,  is  there  not 
something  displeasing  not  alone  about  the  historic 
forms  of  mysticism  but  even  about  the  notion  of  direct 
unmediated  union  with  deity  ?  If  we  avoid  the  vocative 
case  oftentime  in  dealing  with  our  own  great ;  how 
much  more  in  thinking  of  God.  The  pretence  of  the 
mystic  stands  on  no  secure  footing  in  this  modest  and 
third-personal  generation. 

Only,  let  us  be  thoroughgoing.     Let  us  be  clear  that 
mysticism  and  common  worship  do  stand  or  fall  together. 


THE  WORTH  OF  WORSHIP  357 

Are  we  prepared  to  make  away  with  all  religious  observ- 
ance, with  "church,"  and  all  that  goes  with  church? 
If  not,  then  recognize  here  some  muffled  remonstrance 
against  the  total  vanishing  of  the  art  of  the  mystics. 
Is  any  religious  practice  or  institution,  prayer  or  prayer- 
posturing,  solemnity,  sacrament,  or  consecration,  or 
priestly-office  in  any  form,  of  lingering  significance  to 
us,  even  instinctive  and  irrational?  Then,  in  heaven's 
name,  let  us  do  what  we  can  to  isolate  this  element, 
valued  by  many  in  dumbness  and  dilution,  and  make 
an  issue  of  its  intrinsic  worth. 

Further,  let  us  be  clear  that  wherever  mediated  and 
indirect  relations  are  possible  and  valuable,  there  pre- 
sumably immediate  relations  are  possible  and  valuable 
as  well.  Greenbacks  and  reflected  light  are  on  the 
whole  more  widely  useful  than  gold  and  direct  sunshine; 
men  have  tried  to  get  on  without  the  originals  here 
also,  but  not  so  far  successfully.  And  when  we  con- 
sider, is  not  our  doubt  of  worship  even  now  directed 
rather  against  the  special  mediators  which  worship  has 
been  using  than  against  the  thing  itself  ?  We  do  not 
quite  know  what  to  do  with  our  Holy  Writ,  our  Christ, 
our  Priests  and  Saints,  and  our  church  institution.  We 
are  trying  to  shift  our  mediators  from  these  special  ones 
to  some  of  more  universal  character.  But  just  because 
of  this  uncertainty  of  mediation,  the  element  of  unme- 
diated  dealing  with  God  which  is  at  the  heart  of  all 
mediated  dealing  must  assume  greater  importance. 
Could  we  regain  the  secret  of  the  worth  of  worship,  it 
might  well  become  clear  to  us  what  place  in  God's  world 
and  humanity's  world  is  to  be  taken  by  bibles,  priests, 
and  redeemers.  A  true  understanding  of  mysticism,  I 


358  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

venture  to  say,  must  either  cleanly  emancipate  us  from 
the  whole  of  special  religious  trapping  and  performance, 
or  else  reanimate  in  some  vital  fashion  our  historic 
system  of  mediation. 

Thus,  though  the  art  of  worship  as  interpreted  by  the 
mystic  is  foreign  to  many  of  our  prejudices,  a  definite 
self-understanding  may  still  show  that  a  clear  rejection 
is  too  indiscriminate :  it  may  be  one  of  those  things 
which  we  can  hardly  live  with,  nor  yet  live  without. 
The  effort  to  dispense  with  it  is  the  best  way  to  realize 
its  vitality.1  And  it  may  be  possible,  as  a  preliminary 
to  our  detailed  study  of  mysticism,  to  verify  —  even  in 
a  superficial  review  of  our  own  current  consciousness  — 
certain  of  those  motives  which  have  led  men  in  the  past 
to  approach  their  god  thus  directly  and  individually. 
I  doubt  much  whether  that  ancient  sense  of  "  onto- 
logical  importance  "  is  yet  dead.  The  instinctive  nature 
of  prayer  is  some  guarantee  of  its  survival ;  and  it  is 
fair  to  assume  that  every  fundamental  instinct  can 
present  intelligible  grounds  for  its  existence.  The 
expressions  of  prayer  are  sensitive  to  all  the  advances 
of  self-consciousness ;  hence  there  is  little  outward 
resemblance  between  our  own  reserved  devotions  and 
those  enthusiastic  orgies,  incantations,  and  slaughter- 
feasts  —  we  can  put  ourselves  to  worship  more  handily 
than  did  our  forefathers  and  with  less  noise.  But  in 

1  Worship  is  an  art  which  is  perhaps  being  lost  rather  from  over- 
practice  and  dilution  of  its  proper  instinct  than  from  actual  loss  of  the 
secret.  We  think  that  we  know  what  it  is  all  about;  we  find  that  we  get 
on  perfectly  well  without  it;  we  learn  with  some  surprise  that  we  can 
give  no  tenable  reason  for  pursuing  it;  we  end  by  judging  that  it  is  not 
for  us,  who  are  now  able  to  follow  our  religion  by  the  pervasive  and  unob- 
trusive processes  of  thought  and  moral  action. 


THE  WORTH  OF  WORSHIP  359 

some  way,  if  I  mistake  not,  we  can  still  recognize  in 
ourselves  traces  of  that  impulse  which  in  the  religious 
tongue  is  called  the  "  love  of  God,"  some  form  of  that 
same  ancient  demand  for  more  direct  touch  with  our 
Absolute  than  the  usual  processes  of  thought  afford. 

In  the  first  place,  no  one  wholly  escapes  the  sway  of 
a  certain  spiritual  ambition,  which  is  unwilling  —  if 
there  be  in  the  universe  any  supreme  consciousness  — 
to  remain  apart,  or  in  any  relation  to  that  consciousness 
which  is  relatively  external  and  distant.  If  there  is  in 
the  world  any  such  being  as  God  is  supposed  to  be,  a 
career  is  set  for  every  soul :  there  is  an  inevitable  trend 
of  all  finite  spirits  to  a  consciously  understood  footing 
with  that  being.  In  structure  this  is  a  well-known 
principle  of  human  action.  It  is  akin  to  the  necessity 
whereby  every  Christopher  must  serve  his  Strongest : 
because,  namely,  it  is  not  good,  and  in  the  long  run 
insupportable,  that  two  great,  self-conscious,  self -appre- 
ciating powers  should  exist  in  simple  pluralism  or 
disunion,  unperceptive  of  each  other,  unmeasured 
against  each  other.  The  strong  man  who  values  his 
strength  is  restless  until  he  finds  that  situation  in  the 
world  where  his  strength  is  placed.  There  is  a  neces- 
sity imposed  upon  every  self -knowing  thing  to  seek  the 
most  self-knowing  and  the  most  excellent  as  that  in 
whose  presence  it  finds  itself  finally  known  and  judged.1 

1  Doubtless  I  am  attributing  to  the  lovers  of  God  a  greater  sense  of 
their  own  merits  than  at  once  appears  to  their  own  overt  consciousness. 
But  in  all  these  matters  we  are  seeking  an  interpretation  that  is  not  yet 
found  :  and  we  must  assume  the  privilege  of  knowing  the  soul  of  the 
mystic,  if  not  better  than  it  knows  itself,  at  least  more  analytically,  appeal- 
ing to  our  own  self-scrutiny  above  all  traditional  descriptions  of  the 
worshipful  temper. 


360  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

There  is  an  impulse  here  like  that  by  which  men  flock 
to  cities  and  to  great  occasions,  seeking  centers  where 
there  is  adequate  knowledge,  measurement,  and  placing 
of  men.  A  fundamental  and  holy  presumption  of  worth 
there  is  in  this  love  of  God,  such  as  no  soul  can  dissem- 
ble. However  retiring  the  spirit  may  be  with  regard  to 
the  highly-conscious  regions  of  this  historic  world,  to  be 
retiring  with  regard  to  God  is  unmeaning  and  impossible. 
A  sheer  hunger  there  is  in  all  of  us  for  self-conscious- 
ness more  nearly  absolute  than  we  yet  have :  in  some 
form  and  degree  this  motive  is  felt  and  appreciated  by 
all  men. 

And  what  we  can  thus  appreciate  in  diffusion,  we 
must  allow  to  come  to  legitimate  dominance  in  special- 
ization (quite  another  thing  from  extravagance  or  ex- 
aggeration). In  some  souls  this  ambition  may  still 
become  a  ruling  passion,  and  in  them  we  may  best 
see  the  meaning  of  what  is  vague  and  truncated  in 
ourselves.  To  such  minds  the  simple  fact  of  the 
existence  of  a  god  is  an  imperative  profound  and  practi- 
cal: prayer  with  them  becomes  a  clarified  and  persistent 
purpose  which  strikes  out  at  once  upon  an  unrecalled 
journey  of  devotion.  This  impulse  is  seen  at  its  height 
in  those  precocious  mystics  who  even  in  childhood  (as 
Teresa  and  Guyon)  could  not  hear  of  martyrdom  without 
a  surge  of  envy,  and  resolves  to  become  martyrs  likewise. 
Here  is  a  spiritual  exquisiteness  which  may  easily  become 
a  spiritual  avarice :  but  it  is  obviously  in  this  sense  a 
disinterested  love,  that  it  takes  precedence  of  all  other 
interests,  and  requires  no  recompense  in  their  terms. 
These  are  the  mystics  by  birth, — they  who  "desire  to 
leave  all  in  order  to  be  with  God." 


THE  WORTH  OF  WORSHIP  361 

But  note  well  that  while  the  mystic  of  genius  is  a 
natural  product,  the  mystic  impulse  is  not  a  matter  of 
special  temperament.  For  there  are  mystics  in  all  tem- 
peraments. This  incentive  is  deep  enough  in  human 
nature  to  take  various  forms  according  to  the  disposition 
of  the  mind.  There  are  fierce  mystics  as  well  as  tender 
ones ;  men  who  scorn  to  live  in  a  world  where  they  are 
uncertain  of  their  own  souls ;  who  storm  the  gates  of 
the  heavenly  city  till  they  wrest  from  God  the  pledge 
of  their  security  —  the  Jacobs,  Brunos,  Luthers.  Under 
all  such  saintly  bluster  and  Teufelsdrockian  defiance  we 
can  still  recognize  the  love  of  God,  the  ontological 
ambition,  the  need  of  an  unyielding  origin  for  the 
thrusts  of  the  will.  There  are  practical  and  world-mov- 
ing mystics  as  well  as  dreamy  ones,  —  the  Mohammeds, 
Bernards,  Loyolas,  Wesleys.1  The  love  of  God,  also, 
will  be  coloured  by  every  defect  of  the  lover :  there  will 
be  sentimental  mystics,  and  cowardly  mystics,  and  lazy 
mystics,  and  many  another  sort.  It  is  the  property  of 
mysticism  to  set  all  such  elements  of  personality  into 
high  relief  —  not  a  disadvantage,  if  one  demands  self- 
knowledge.  We  have  no  present  interest  in  these 
peculiarities  save  to  show  that  the  spiritual  ambition  of 
the  mystic  is  the  prerogative  of  no  one  peculiar  type  of 
human  nature. 

The  love  of  God,  I  have  said,  desires  the  assured 
presence  of  God  and  the  drastic  self-knowledge  which 
that  presence  brings,  as  an  immediate  insight.  But 

1  Wesley  and  Luther  were  mystics  within  our  definition,  though  both 
were  hostile  to  certain  types  of  mysticism  which  came  uncomfortably  near 
to  their  own  positions,  so  that  verbally  they  are  known  rather  as  opponents 
of  mysticism  than  as  mystics. 


362  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

there  is  another  aspect  of  this  same  spiritual  ambition ; 
for  worship  seems  to  contain  a  demand  for  knowledge 
of  truth  about  the  world,  as  well  as  about  self.  The 
mystic  reports  that  he  now  knows  something  about  the 
meaning  of  life  and  death,  and  of  the  other  grave 
things  that  concern  mankind.  This  is  such  knowl- 
edge as  each  individual  soul  of  man  has  need  of,  and 
such  as  one  can  hardly  accept  either  on  hearsay  or  on 
inference,  if  it  can  be  obtained  in  one's  own  immediate 
perception. 

Fear  of  the  unknown,  the  primitive  human  fear,  though 
it  has  become  much  socialized,  is  not  to  be  banished. 
Our  own  personal  destiny  we  may  now,  in  the  midst  of 
a  worthful  social  order,  more  readily  and  honorably 
forget  than  could  our  ancestors :  and  to  affect  an 
unconcern  regarding  death  and  the  future  has  become 
in  some  eyes  a  stock  virtue.  But  these  things  cannot 
always  be  forgotten,  nor  ever  rightfully  forgotten,  until 
we  have  once  cleared  our  minds  with  regard  to  them. 
The  need  to  make  immediately  sure  the  foundations  of 
life  is  not  an  impulse  that  can  grow  antiquated  or 
improper.  No  motive  to  prayer  is  more  fundamental 
than  this,  which  in  presence  of  such  a  limit  of  insight 
as  makes  the  soul  a  subordinate  in  the  universe  requires 
of  existence  the  power  to  surmount  it.  And  on  no 
point  are  the  mystics  more  agreed  than  on  this,  that 
worship  brings  "  revelation."  The  "  noetic  "  character 
of  mystic  experience  is  so  general  that  James  includes  it 
in  his  definition  of  mysticism.  How,  in  the  presence  of 
God  who  knows  these  things,  the  worshipper  also  gains 
some  insight  into  them  I  do  not  here  enquire ;  but  it 
seems  evident  that  the  impulse  of  prayer  has  in  it  as  one 


THE   WORTH   OF  WORSHIP  363 

ingredient  a  desire  for  such  insight  as  this ;  and  that 
some  of  the  mystics  think  themselves  to  have  gained  it. 
The  mystic's  remarkable  inability  to  speak  out  may 
be  no  discredit  to  either  the  value  or  the  universality 
of  what  he  so  mysteriously  knows.  It  is  a  principle 
observable  elsewhere  that  the  more  heavily  we  are 
impressed  by  a  truth,  the  more  difficult  it  is  to  put  its 
significance  at  once  into  words.  He  who  knows  in  any 
intense  and  profound  fashion  may  labor,  as  poets  have 
sometimes  done,  for  years  with  the  burden  of  his  mean- 
ing. It  is  quite  possible  to  win  an  insight  suddenly, 
and  to  know  that  one  has  it;  and  yet  to  find  that 
knowledge  standing  forth  in  the  midst  of  the  soul  like 
a  body  at  once  powerfully  charged  and  powerfully 
insulated,  sputtering  with  sparks  and  fringes  and 
penumbrae,  but  accomplishing  no  relieving  strokes. 
The  circumstance  which  gives  credit  to  the  mystic's 
assertion  is  that  he  has  held  himself  responsible  for  his 
alleged  revelation.  He  has  labored  to  make  it  public, 
notwithstanding  its  difficulty.  Boehme  spends  twelve 
years,  so  he  tells  us,  in  bringing  to  birth  the  truth  with 
which  two  such  experiences  had  burdened  him.  In 
spite  of  what  James  tells  us,  that  the  mystic's  knowledge 
is  not  binding  on  any  but  himself,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
mystic  is  under  some  radical  necessity  of  propagating 
his  truth :  is  he  not  the  most  vehement  propagandist  of 
history  ?  And  have  not  men,  on  the  whole,  benefitted 
by  his  announcements  ?  Some  knowledge  of  universal 
truth,  it  seems,  may  come  to  men  through  worship. 

And  our  judgment  of  the  worth  of  worship  must 
also  take  into  account,  as  I  surmise,  the  worth  of  novelty 


364  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

in  knowledge  and  in  life  generally.  In  the  worship  of 
the  gods,  the  force  of  all  habits  is  for  the  moment 
destroyed,  habits  of  mind  and  of  action.  In  tribal  life, 
the  customary  taboos  are  suspended;  the  moment  of 
worship  is  an  antinomian  moment,  and  what  is  deposited 
out  of  it  may  be  different  from  what  was  dissolved  into 
it.  From  their  mystics  the  people  are  ready  at  this 
time  to  hear  things  and  to  receive  commands  which 
would  previously  have  been  blasphemy.  Mystical  prac- 
tices may  themselves  become  habitual,  and  have  their 
acknowledged  place  in  the  system  of  things  ;  oracles 
and  prophecies  have  their  established  modes  and  places : 
but  these  are  habitual  ways  of  receiving  the  destruction 
of  habit ;  they  are  the  point  of  fixity  which  renders  all 
other  fixities  relative  and  unnecessary.  Worship  is  the 
provision  which  the  spiritual  constitution  has  made  for 
its  own  perpetual  amendment. 

In  the  increasing  solidification  of  tribal  life,  and  the 
submergence  of  personality  in  the  "  cake  of  custom," 
the  god-consulting  process  is  the  one  spot  which  remains 
fluent  and  strange  to  the  tribe  itself.  Hence  doubtless 
the  uncouth  forms  in  which  mystical  practices  have 
clothed  themselves ;  the  strange  spot  in  the  life  of  a 
strange  people  may  well  seem  alien  to  our  own  habits 
(unless,  indeed,  we  find  it  the  one  spot  in  which  that 
weird  social  machinery  becomes  wholly  human  and  uni- 
versal). But  however  tamed  worship  may  become,  it 
has  always  this  same  function  in  the  life  of  people  or 
of  individual :  it  involves  the  external  criticism  of  all 
habit,  and  a  radical  openness  to  novelty.  Within  the 
motive  of  worship  there  is  to  be  discerned,  I  believe,  a 
weariness  of  the  old,  the  habitual,  the  established,  —  a 


THE   WORTH  OF  WORSHIP  365 

hunger  for  what  is  radically  new  and  untried.  This  is, 
in  part,  the  significance  of  that  deliberate  undoing  of  all 
bonds  and  attachments,  of  all  received  knowledges  and 
properties,  which  is  part  of  the  preparation  for  the  mys- 
tical experience  in  all  ages.  If  it  were  possible  for  the 
soul  to  become  aware  of  all  its  attachments  and  habits, 
how  could  it  be  better  disposed  for  originality?  The 
scientific  discipline  of  the  mind  is  of  the  same  effect 
in  its  own  sphere:  to  disaffect  oneself  as  far  as  may 
be  of  prepossessions,  to  recognize  and  allow  for  the 
biases  of  the  person,  the  body,  and  the  age.  It  is  not 
improbable,  then,  that  worship  may  include  this  value 
of  preparing  the  soul  for  the  reception  of  novelty 
with  its  primary  value  of  uniting  the  worshipper  with 
his  God. 

Worship  may  be  regarded  as  an  attempt  to  detach 
oneself  from  everything  else  in  uniting  with  God.  It 
seeks  God  first  as  an  object,  that  Other  of  all  worldly 
objects;  and  it  seeks  to  join  itself  to  that  absolute 
Other.  The  mystic  proceeds  by  negation  ;  this  and 
that,  he  says,  are  not  God :  it  is  not  these  that  I  seek. 
The  effort  of  worship  measures  the  soul's  power  of 
detachment.  And  my  power  of  detachment  measures 
the  whole  of  my  freedom,  the  whole  of  my  possibility 
of  happiness,  the  whole  of  my  possible  originality,  the 
whole  depth  and  reach  of  my  morality  and  of  my  human 
contribution.  What  the  mystic  reaches  is,  in  terms  of 
his  world-conceptions,  a  zero  :  not  indeed  the  Whole  of 
reality,  but  Substance,  the  heart  of  God.  It  is  just 
such  a  zero  as  one  encounters  when  he  seeks  his  own 
soul  behind  the  shifting  content  of  his  experience,  or 
when  he  seeks  the  soul  of  another,  in  distinction  from 


366  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

that  other's  various  external  expressions.  This  zero  is 
not  a  place  to  stay  in;  but  it  may  be  pre-eminently  a 
place  to  return  to,  and  to  depart  from.  In  worship 
one  touches  the  bottom  of  that  bottomless  pit  of  Self 
and  perceives  at  hand  the  real  Origin  of  things ;  gaining 
not  the  whole  of  any  knowledge,  but  the  beginning 
and  measure  of  all  knowledge.  May  not  worship  be 
described  as  the  will  to  become,  for  a  moment  and 
within  one's  own  measure,  what  existence  is ;  or  more 
simply,  as  the  act  of  recalling  oneself  to  being? 

If  these  suggestions  have  truth  in  them,  the  act  of 
worship  may  begin  to  justify  itself,  even  from  the  stand- 
point of  use  in  experience.  It  might  be  described  as 
a  spontaneous  impulse  for  spiritual  self-preservation  ; 
for  self-placing,  for  the  ultimate  judgment  of  life,  and 
for  the  perpetual  renewal  of  the  worth  of  life.  And  in 
thus  returning  to  the  sources  of  being  we  may  still  more 
dimly  discern,  it  may  be,  a  self-preservation  of  farther 
scope,  such  as  immortality  may  hang  on  ;  a  glint  of 
ontological  bearing  of  unlimited  importance. 

It  is  true  that  the  "love  of  God"  does  not  explicitly 
seek  these  things  :  it  is  the  wholly  simple  impulse  of 
which  these  strands  are  but  artificially  severed  elements. 
The  worth  of  God's  presence  to  the  genuine  mystic  is 
a  sufficient  and  absolute  good ;  and  he  often  expresses 
himself  as  if  the  ecstasy  of  his  moment  were  its  own 
justification.  But  every  immediate  value  must  be  sanc- 
tioned by  its  bearings  in  the  system  of  all  values,  must 
have  a  meaning  which  can  give  account  of  itself  in 
the  form  of  knowledges  such  as  we  have  suggested. 
Worship  must  not  be  an  intoxication  which  alienates 


THE   WORTH  OF  WORSHIP  367 

the  soul  from  the  duller  interests  of  experience ;  and 
hence,  as  mysticism  has  learned  its  own  meaning,  it 
has  realized  that  subjective  delight  recommends  noth- 
ing, and  that  the  supremacy  of  the  moment  of  its 
experience  must  be  judged  by  the  staying  powers  of 
its  insight. 

We  must  not  hesitate,  therefore,  to  explain  the  love 
of  God  by  what  it  is  not, — the  one  by  the  many,  the 
disinterested  by  the  interested,  the  self -abandoning  by 
the  self-seeking.  We  must  assert  that  there  is  no  love 
of  God  which  is  not  at  the  same  time  an  unlimited  self- 
valuation  ;  that  there  is  always  something  self-seeking 
about  worship  and  mysticism  generally.  Something 
forever  dissatisfied  with  what  mankind,  in  its  habit, 
philosophy,  art,  and  formulae  generally  have  to  offer 
this  individual  soul  for  its  safety  and  comfort  and  occu- 
pation and  enjoyment  and  loyalty.  Not  good  enough 
is  all  this  for  my  personal  particular  spirit,  says  the 
mystic ;  nothing  in  the  world  is  good  enough  for  me. 
But  because  of  this  personal  dissatisfaction,  and  demand, 
and  further  seeking  for  self,  something  creative  might 
well  come  of  worship,  we  think.  And  something  not 
un-social  in  its  result.  Perhaps  this  spark  of  ontological 
ambition  which  creative  nature  has  deposited  in  the 
single  self,  is  nature's  own  way  of  bringing  the  new  to 
pass  for  the  good  of  all  creation.  It  is  indeed  the 
noblest  and  truest  of  all  self-seeking  tempers,  the  utmost 
measure  of  character  and  worth.  The  love  wherewith 
God  loves  the  individual  may  reappear,  perchance,  in 
that  love  wherewith  the  individual  loves  God,  —  and 
himself,  —  and  all  men. 

So  much,  then,  for  preliminary  conjectures  as  to  the 


368  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

possible  permanent  worth  of  worship,  the  meaning  of 
the  mystical  love  of  God.  We  may  now  put  ourselves, 
I  trust  with  greater  patience,  to  an  examination  of  the 
facts  in  the  case. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  MYSTIC'S  PREPARATION:   THE  NEGATIVE 
PATH 

WHAT  worship  is,  and  how  it  differs  from  think- 
ing, the  mystics  themselves  have  made  copious 
efforts  to  explain.  Whatever  the  distinctive  nature  of 
worship  may  be,  something  of  it  should  appear  in  a 
study  of  the  ways  used  by  the  mystics  in  approaching 
their  god,  and  in  the  directions  which  they  have  given 
to  other  souls  who  would  win  the  same  certainty. 

In  undertaking  such  a  study,  we  shall  not  do  well  to 
impose  at  first  our  own  language  upon  the  mystics.  We 
must  give  ourselves  over  for  the  time  to  their  guidance, 
to  their  own  modes  of  expression,  and  even — so  far  as 
we  can — to  their  sentiments;  realizing  that  they  are 
laboring  with  conceptions  not  wholly  literalized,  and 
that  we  shall  be  able  in  due  course  to  win  our  own 
freedom  and  our  own  interpretation. 

But  as  the  mystics  have  been  pioneers  in  psycholog- 
ical analysis  we  shall  not  be  at  any  moment  free  from 
the  necessity  of  looking  behind  their  language.  In 
trying  to  give  explicit  guidance,  our  spiritual  directors 
have  been  only  too  careful,  too  profuse,  too  minute  in 
their  distinctions ;  and  one  must  perforce  ride  over  the 
distinctions  somewhat  roughly.  And  further,  we  must 
expect  much  of  the  figurative  and  even  cryptic  in  their 
speech.  There  seems  to  be  some  intrinsic  difficulty 


370  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

about  explaining  worship  in  literal  terms,  or  without 
presupposing  that  the  hearer  already  knows  what  is 
meant.  The  Book  itself  nowhere  explains,  but  simply 
assumes  that  we  understand  what  is  implied  in  "  lifting 
up  our  eyes  unto  the  hills,"  and  in  all  similar  figures.1 

Indeed,  there  is  a  strong  disposition  in  the  mystic, 
even  when  he  acts  as  guide,  to  give  up  the  effort  of 
describing  what  is  distinctive  of  worship  :  he  is  inclined 
to  summarize  whatever  is  unique  about  the  process,  and 
especially  whatever  distinguishes  it  from  thinking,  by 
invoking  a  special  faculty  of  the  mind  —  this  we  have 
already  noticed.  Nothing  could  more  strongly  express 
his  conviction  that  worship  and  thought  are  diverse ; 
but  of  course  all  such  appeals  to  a  special  faculty  throw 
the  burden  of  understanding  back  upon  the  hearer. 
The  names  which  the  mystics  have  invented  for  this 
special  faculty  are  curious  and  wonderful,  yet  not  with- 
out power  of  suggestion.  We  found  Tauler,  in  the 

1  As  power  of  psychological  analysis  grows,  our  mystic  advisers  are 
able  to  meet  the  soul  more  nearly  on  its  own  ground  ;  yet  the  results  of 
this  progress  for  the  most  part  make  not  less  demand,  but  rather  more, 
upon  our  native  understanding.  This  passage  from  Tauler  is  not  more 
cryptic  than  many  another  :  "  Only  to  those  is  this  great  Good,  Light,  and 
Comfort  revealed  who  are  outwardly  pure  and  inwardly  enlightened,  and 
who  know  how  to  dwell  within  themselves.  .  .  .  When  the  Nameless  in 
the  soul  turns  itself  wholly  inward  toward  God,  there  follows  and  turns 
with  it  everything  which  in  man  hath  a  name.  And  this  turning  attaches 
itself  always  to  that  in  God  which  is  likewise  Nameless.  .  .  .  Then  in 
such  a  man  God  announces  his  true  peace."  Such  words  as  these  are 
surely  addressed  rather  to  those  who  already  know  than  to  those  who  from 
the  standpoint  of  ignorance  enquire,  and  Tauler  is  not  unconscious  of  this. 
"  Now  I  will  tell  you  something  further  of  this  search  .  .  .  and  in  plain 
German  words,  too  ;  yet  I  fear  that  you  will  not  all  understand  them. 
But  those  of  you  who  have  already  experienced  something  of  such  sacred 
things,  and  in  whom  such  light  has  once  inwardly  shined,  may  well 
understand  something  of  what  I  say."  (Predigten,  ii.  307,  Ausg.  1841.) 


THE  NEGATIVE  PATH  371 

passage  quoted,  referring  to  this  faculty  as  "  the  Name- 
less in  the  soul "  ;  and  Tauler  is  exceptionally  fertile  in 
just  such  names  for  this  Nameless.  It  is  called  the 
Spark  of  the  soul  (Fiinklein,  Eckhart;  Scintilla,  Bona- 
ventura),  the  Apex  of  the  soul,  also  the  Ground  of  the 
soul,  further,  its  Groundless  Nothing,  its  Right  Eye,  its 
Eternal  Eye,  its  Upward  Face,  its  Innermost,  and  the 
like.  He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear.  We 
understand  these  expressions,  more  or  less  dimly,  just 
as  we  understand  what  "The  Subconscious"  is  —  out 
modern  Great  Fetich  of  a  special  faculty :  we  under- 
stand them  in  so  far  as  we  find  within  our  own  experi- 
ence something  which  may  serve  as  key  to  the  riddle. 
We  have,  indeed,  no  reason  to  reject  as  meaningless 
these  appeals  to  a  special  faculty :  we  are  no  longer  in 
danger  of  picturing  our  mind  in  insulated  compart- 
ments :  we  may  use  these  names  as  indicating  the 
process  of  worship  in  its  totality,  and  vaguely  charac- 
terizing its  difference  from  other  activities.1  They  are 
summary  names  for  our  problem,  and  as  such  they  are 
useful  and  true  :  but  they  are  the  beginning  of  our 
analysis,  not  the  end  of  it. 


Various  as  the  ways  are  which  mystics  in  different 
ages  have  used  in  approaching  their  god,  their  resem- 

1  We  know  that  one  "  faculty  "  is  distinguished  from  another  only 
(a)  by  difference  in  the  objects  with  which  it  deals,  and  (b)  by  a  differ- 
ence in  the  procedure  by  which  these  objects  are  found.  The  faculty  of 
religious  knowledge  is  thus  to  be  defined  (a)  by  the  fact  that  it  considers 
God  as  its  object,  and  (b)  by  the  fact  that  we  have  distinctive  things  to 
do  in  order  to  approach  God.  The  faculty  itself  is  but  a  name  for  these 
actions  taken  as  one. 


372  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

blances  run  deep.  In  all  of  them  there  are  efforts  of 
the  mind  fairly  described  in  the  mediaeval  terms,  purga- 
tion and  meditation.  And  in  all  of  them  these  active 
efforts  are  brought  to  a  close  by  a  voluntary  passivity. 

Let  me  note  in  passing  that  in  all  acts  of  will,  the 
body  plays  its  part ;  and  it  is  the  physical  side  of  all 
mental  acts,  whether  one  sets  himself  about  thinking, 
or  enjoying,  or  praying,  which  is  most  directly  control- 
lable. In  proportion  as  the  inner  process  is  subtle  and 
evanescent,  the  physical  preliminaries  must  be  extensive. 
The  most  delicate  instruments  of  precision  require  the 
heaviest  of  foundations.  If  attention  is  preparing  for 
some  especially  fine  discrimination,  as  in  listening  for  faint 
sounds,  the  larger  muscles  will  be  called  into  play  as  a 
frame  to  the  smaller  ones.  Thus  in  worship  also,  or 
rather,  especially  in  worship,  the  physical  basis  must  be 
cared  for  :  the  first  preparation  of  the  mystic  has  always 
been  a  physical  preparation,  more  or  less  elaborate — of 
cleansing,  fasting,  continence,  ascetic  practices  generally, 
solitude,  darkness,  kneeling  or  other  special  disposition 
of  the  body.  We  have  no  need  to  go  into  the  details 
of  these  performances,  which  are  at  bottom  quite  as 
instinctive  as  are  the  physical  efforts  of  thought  and 
emotion ;  we  have  simply  to  note  their  necessary  presence. 
Worship  is  too  spiritual  a  process  to  dispense  with  the 
material.  It  is  only  by  the  enlistment  of  the  body,  in 
some  fashion,  that  the  body  can  be  held  in  leash  during 
the  difficult  flight  of  the  soul. 

Now  of  the  inner  preparation  itself  which  accompan- 
ies this  external  activity,  it  is  predominantly  negative ; 
and  we  may  begin  by  considering  the  mystic's  self-denial, 
or  "purgation." 


THE   NEGATIVE   PATH  373 

The  mystic's  effort  is  largely  given  to  suppressing  the 
various  natural  momenta  both  of  the  mind  and  of  the 
desires,  —  an  essay,  as  we  have  said,  in  detachment.  It 
is  a  summary  exercise  of  one's  power  both  of  abstraction 
and  of  renunciation.  "  Into  this  house  (of  his  innermost 
self)  must  man  now  go,  and  completely  desist  from  and 
abandon  his  sensations,  and  all  sensible  things,  such  as 
are  brought  into  the  soul  and  perceived  by  the  senses 
and  the  imagination.  And  he  must  also  put  away  all 
ideas  and  forms,  even  the  conceptions  of  reason,  and  all 
activity  of  his  own  reason." 1  "  A  man  must  begin  by 
denying  himself,  and  willingly  forsaking  all  things  for 
God's  sake,  and  must  give  up  his  own  will,  and  all  his 
natural  inclinations,  and  separate  and  cleanse  himself 
thoroughly  from  all  sins  and  evil  ways  .  .  .  And  when 
a  man  hath  thus  broken  loose  from  and  outleaped  all 
temporal  things  and  creatures,  he  may  afterward  become 
perfect, "  etc.  "No  one  can  be  enlightened  unless  he  be 
first  cleansed  or  purified  and  stripped.  So  also,  no  one 
can  be  united  with  God  unless  he  be  first  enlightened. 
Thus  there  are  three  stages:  first,  the  purification  (or 
purgation);  secondly,  the  enlightening;  thirdly,  the 
union."  2 

In  this  sort  of  mental  and  moral  self -suppression, 
there  is  much  room  for  casuistry.  The  attempt  to 
deny  self  completely  brings  Oriental  mystic  and  West- 
ern mystic  into  the  same  familiar  paradoxes  of  self- 
consciousness.  From  what  self,  and  from  what  desires 
must  I  detach  myself?  or  from  all?  And  if  from  all, 
for  what  motive? 

1  Tauler.  3.  Predigt  auf  den  3.  Sonnt.  nach  Trin. 

*  Theologia  Germanica,  trans.  Wiukworth,  chs.  xiii  and  xiy. 


374  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

Here  the  philosophies  part  the  mystics.  The  more 
roundly  God  is  divided  off  from  the  world,  the  more 
unrelenting  is  the  antithesis  between  all  heavenly  and 
all  earthly  affections.  If  we  can  draw  a  clear  line 
between  the  eternal  and  the  temporal  the  task  of  repu- 
diating the  temporal  becomes  a  deadly  affair.  If  it  is 
once  fairly  accomplished,  the  mystic  has  destroyed  all 
reason  for  return.  "If  our  inward  man  were  to  make 
a  leap  and  spring  into  the  Perfect,  we  should  find  and 
taste  how  that  the  Perfect  is  without  measure  .  .  .  better 
and  nobler  than  all  which  is  imperfect  and  in  part,  and 
the  Eternal  above  the  temporal  or  perishable,  and  the 
fountain  and  source  above  all  that  floweth  or  can  ever 
flow  from  it.  Thus  that  which  is  imperfect  and  in  part 
would  become  tasteless  and  be  as  nothing  to  us." *  Such 
a  soul  has  become  a  citizen  of  another  country;  it 
resumes  its  loves,  if  at  all,  with  a  gleam  of  absence — 
the  mystic  has  become  spoiled  for  living.2 

It  is  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  facts  about  human 
nature  that  it  is  capable,  under  the  spell  of  religious 
ambition,  of  such  superhuman  heart-steeling.  A  large 
part  of  the  fame  of  mysticism  in  history  is  due  to  its 
achievements  in  indifference.  And  though  the  giants 
of  self -mutilation  may  have  been  the  victims  of  mis- 
taken theories,  I  find  in  their  willingness  to  pay  the 
extreme  price  something  heroic  to  which  I  cannot  but 
do  reverence.  He  who  believes  that  "  if  God  is  to  come 
in,  the  creatures  must  go  out "  must  make  his  drastic 
choice. 

1  Theologia  Germanica,  ch.  vi. 

2  "  And  if  our  Lord  did  not  now  and  then  suffer  these  visions  to  be 
forgotten,  though  they  recur  again  and  again  to  memory,  I  know  not  how 
life  could  be  borne."     Teresa,  Life,  ch,  xxxviii  (tr.  Lewis). 


THE  NEGATIVE  PATH  375 

But  human  nature  has  also  its  own  quiet  refutations : 
these  holy  ones  do  often  grow  less  zealous  when  sep- 
arated from  their  influence  and  fame.  Can  it  be  that 
all  this  violence  has  but  driven  worldly  interest  to  more 
subtle  attachments?  For  the  most  part,  yes:  the  love 
of  life  has  been  dispersed  and  transformed,  not  destroyed. 
It  has  been,  in  part,  the  good-fortune  of  mysticism  that 
self -scrutiny  has  its  limits;  that  many  a  wider  human 
affection  may  exist  without  being  observed  and  hunted 
to  death.  If  St.  Catherine  of  Siena  has  become  the 
"bride  of  Christ"  she  cannot,  of  course,  be  the  bride  of 
any  mortal:  but  she  is  set  free  to  love  many  a  mortal  as 
no  other  woman  dare.  Fortunate  St.  Catherine,  whose 
self -searching  has  its  limit.  Unfortunate  Meister  Eck- 
hart  and  many  another  who  can  think  out  such  demands 
as  this :  "  So  long  as  ye  desire  to  fulfil  the  will  of  God 
and  have  any  desire,  even  after  eternity  and  God,  so 
long  are  ye  not  truly  poor.  He  alone  hath  true  spiritual 
poverty  who  wills  nothing,  knows  nothing,  desires  noth- 
ing."1 Here  mysticism  groans  on  the  rack  of  its  own 
logic;  and  must  continue  to  do  so,  until  after  untold 
spiritual  agony  it  discovers  the  meaning  of  its  negations. 
This  radical  self-annihilation  must  give  way :  the  negation 
of  opposition  must  become  a  negation  of  priority.  For 
the  sounder  mystics  the  love  of  God  remains  at  the  heart 
of  their  plural  other  loves:  and  if  the  fires  of  these 

1  Injustice  to  Eckhart  I  should  say  that  he  is  not  always  so  nihilistic. 
The  following  fragment  of  a  saying  (italics  mine)  may  more  fairly 
express  what  he  means :  "  was  ist  luterkeit  ?  das  ist  das  sich  der  mensche 
gekeret  habe  von  alien  creaturen  vnt  sin  herce  so  gar  uf  gerichtet  habe 
gen  dem  lutern  guot,  das  ime  kein  creature  troastlichen  si,  vnt  ir  ouch 
nit  begere  denne  als  uil  als  si  das  luter  guot,  das  got  ist,  darinne  begriffen 
mag."  Wackernagel,  Altd.  Leseb.,  col.  681. 


376  WORSHIP  AND   THE   MYSTICS 

become  invisible  during  the  moment  of  sacred  passion, 
it  is  not  the  invisibility  of  death.  They  have  joined 
their  tongues  in  one  upleaping  flame,  to  return  without 
break  to  the  severalty  of  their  individual  altars. 

Changing  conceptions  admit  some  union  of  the  infi- 
nite with  the  finite;  nevertheless  the  active  part  of 
worship  still  remains  a  path  of  negation.  For  the  god 
whom  the  mystic  seeks  is  in  fact  something  other  than 
any  given  natural  object  of  pursuit;  and  since  we  are 
always  better  aware  of  what  our  absolute  is  not  than  of 
what  it  is,  the  note  of  negation  must  remain  predomi- 
nant. But  meanwhile,  worship  has  its  positive  side 
also;  the  mystic  has  always  in  some  way  recognized  the 
fact  that  passion  can  be  cast  out  only  by  some  greater 
passion.  We  may  now  consider  what  these  positive 
elements  are. 

II 

In  turning  away  from  the  world,  the  mystic  has 
always  needed  something  to  turn  toward ;  in  all  of  his 
purgation  there  has  been  an  element  of  "meditation." 
He  has  done  what  he  can  to  find  his  own  positive  ulti- 
mate will,  to  make  real  to  himself  what  it  is  that  he 
most  deeply  cares  for.  He  has  tried  to  remind  himself 
of  his  absolute  good. 

A  great  part  of  what  we  commonly  know  as  prayer 
is,  in  effect,  just  such  a  process  of  self-reminding.  The 
simplest  rational  account  of  prayer  would  probably  be 
this:  a  voluntary  recollection  of  those  deepest  prin- 
ciples of  will,  or  preference,  which  the  activities  of  liv- 
ing tend  to  obscure.  In  essence,  this  is  not  different 
from  the  practice  developed  chiefly  by  the  Roman 


THE  NEGATIVE  PATH  377 

Stoics,  who  found  it  useful  as  a  matter  of  self-discipline 
to  recall,  in  this  or  that  trying  situation,  what  is  truly 
to  be  desired  and  valued,  and  what  is  a  mere  illusion  of 
value.  "  Straightway  practise  saying  to  every  harsh 
appearance,  you  are  an  appearance,  and  in  no  wise 
what  you  pretend  to  be.  ...  Never  say  about  any- 
thing, I  have  lost  it ;  but  say,  I  have  restored  it.  ...  Is 
the  oil  spilled  ?  Say,  on  the  occasion,  At  such  a  price 
is  sold  freedom  from  perturbation.  ...  In  every  cir- 
cumstance, hold  these  reflections  ready : 

Lead  me,  O  Zeus,  and  thou,  O  Destiny, 

The  way  I  am  bid  by  you  to  go  : 

To  follow  I  am  ready.     If  I  choose  not, 

I  make  myself  a  wretch  —  and  still  must  follow." 

Thus  the  practice  of  bethinking  oneself  of  one's  first 
principles  of  value  shades  with  Epictetus  insensibly  into 
prayer. 

But  in  the  prayers  of  the  typical  mystics,  the  act  of 
self-reminding  is  less  frequently  concerned  with  such 
explicit  truths  or  principles:  it  is  more  often  a  medi- 
tation upon  some  object  in  which  values  are  rather 
embodied  than  expressed.  Objects  of  familiar  pious 
reflection  are  chosen  as  means  of  recovering  the  mystic 
strand  of  consciousness,  and  of  bringing  into  abstract 
preference  the  quality  of  conviction.  A  concrete 
object,  moreover,  is  less  confining  than  a  formula :  it 
has  its  truth  as  the  formula  has,  but  in  infinite  con- 
centration. Especially  if  this  object  is  a  person,  or  an 
event  of  religious  history,  the  soul  may  find  in  it  an  all 
but  adequate  embodiment  of  the  absolute  good,  bear- 
ing at  once  on  all  circumstances  of  life,  and  not  on 
some  only. 


378  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

But  neither  the  formula  nor  the  concrete  object  is 
wholly  satisfactory  as  an  object  of  meditation.1  As  the 
mystic  becomes  proficient,  he  recognizes  that  all  such 
objects  have  but  relative  worth.2  Teresa  used  at  one  time 
to  begin  her  orisons  with  thoughts  of  episodes  of  the 
Passion  :  but  she  writes,  "  There  are  many  souls  who 
make  greater  progress  by  meditation  on  other  subjects ; 
for  as  there  are  many  mansions  in  heaven,  so  there  are 
many  roads  leading  thither.  Some  persons  advance  by 
considering  themselves  in  hell — others  in  heaven;  and 
these  latter  are  distressed  by  meditations  on  hell." 
Clearly,  then,  there  is  no  necessity  in  any  of  these 
objects.  And  further,  their  office  (as  objects  of  delib- 
erate meditation)  is  transient:  they  must  go,  at  last, 
the  way  of  all  other  objects  of  thought  and  desire. 

For  to  all  the  mystics,  whether  of  East  or  West,  this 

1  In  the  choice  of  these  objects,  the  working  of  experience  is  evi- 
dent :    any  religious  tradition  lights  upon  the  words  and  episodes  and 
characters  and  phrases  and  hymns  which  best  mediate  the  mystic  con- 
sciousness of  its  own  epoch  ;  and  as  the  mental  attitude  to  be  reached  is 
one  of  difficulty,  this  choice  must  be  sensitive  to  all  the  shades  of  human 
temper.     It  is  here  that  questions  of  taste  intrude  to  dispel  religious  har- 
mony :  acceptable  objects  for  such  reflection  must  vary  not  alone  from 
age  to  age,  but  also  from  person  to  person,  and  from  social  group  to  social 
group.     A  loss  of  sympathy  here  makes  the  greatest  of  difficulties  in  reli- 
gious understanding,  quite  apart  from  questions  of  creed.     We  do  not  now 
find  those  objects  edifying  upon  which  our  mediaeval  brethren  could  dwell 
for  pious  hours  without  pall,  and  which  made  the  themes  of  their  religious 
art.     What  we  have  to  do  is  to  penetrate  to  what  is  necessary  and  uni- 
versal in  these  objects,  fitting  to  humanity,  and  not  to  this  or  that  stage 
of  religious  sentiment. 

2  I  ignore  for  the  present  questions  which  naturally  gave  the  Chris- 
tian mystics  much  trouble,  whether  in  the  higher  reaches  of  prayer  any 
consciousness  remains  of  the  sacred  humanity,  the  Holy  Trinity,  etc.     See, 
for  instance,  Fe*nelon,  Explication  des  Maximes  des  Saints,  Arts,  xxvii, 
xxviii. 


THE   NEGATIVE   PATH  379 

stage  of  meditation  is  a  mere  preliminary ;  and  the 
function  of  these  objects  is  at  least  as  thoroughly 
negative  as  positive.  They  have  rather  to  recall  the 
mind  from  other  things  than  to  fix  it  upon  themselves. 
Their  function  is  chiefly  one  of  neutralizing  and  sky- 
clearing  :  in  so  far  as  they  leave  the  mind  occupied  with 
particular  images,  they  too  must  be  put  away.  The 
Yogi  must  meditate  upon  the  syllable  OM,  but  only 
to  unify  his  mind  and  to  prepare  for  the  exclusion  of 
that  syllable  together  with  all  other  objects  :  it  is  but 
a  ladder  which  in  mounting  he  puts  beneath  him ;  it  is 
the  sand  with  which  the  sweeper  covers  his  floor. 

The  one  positive  admonition  which  is  most  persistent 
is  the  vague  direction  to  turn  the  thoughts  inward. 
And  even  the  meaning  of  this  "inward"  is  rather 
not-outward  than  positively  introspective.1  "  Introrsum 
ascendere  "  is  the  brief  formula  for  the  mystic's  self- 
direction.  In  all  its  vagueness  this  direction  has  prob- 
ably served  a  better  purpose  than  any  attempt  to  be 
more  explicit.  For  any  positive  and  literal  direction  is 
apt  to  become  a  misdirection,  a  danger  clearly  recognized 
by  many  a  keen  student  of  human  nature  among  the 
mystics,  and  warned  against.  "  Let  him  not  presume 
to  approach  that  excellent  Darkness  which  is  beyond 
all  Light,  but  rather  the  darkness  of  the  not-knowing  of 
God]  and  there  let  him  yield  himself  to  God  in  all 
simplicity,  asking  nothing,  begging  and  desiring  nothing, 
but  loving  and  intending  only  God,  and  verily  such  an 

1  In  so  far  as  it  suggests  a  subjectivity  of  interest,  we  shall  find  the 
mystic  endeavoring  to  correct  the  impression.  "  To  ascend  to  God,"  says 
Hugo  of  Saint  Victor,  "  is  to  enter  into  ourselves  ;  and  not  only  so,  but 
in  our  inmost  selves  to  transcend  ourselves  "  (iueffabili  quodam  modo  in 
intimis  se  ipsum  transire). 


380  WORSHIP  AND   THE  MYSTICS 

unknown  God.  Yea,  upon  His  unknown  will  let  him 
throw  all  his  affairs  and  concerns  as  well  as  his  sins  and 
wickedness  as  they  there  occur  to  him,  and  this  all  with 
genuine  love."1 

Thus  the  content  of  the  object  of  meditation  tends 
to  reduce  to  a  nothing  —  so  far  as  picture-content  is  con- 
cerned— but  not  quite  to  nothing,  unless  will  is  nothing. 

Ill 

In  the  long  experimental  history  of  these  efforts  of 
purgation  and  meditation,  three  things  have  become 
clear.  First,  that  the  mystic  cannot  complete  his  own 

1  I  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  here  at  length  Tauler's  recognition 
of  this  difficulty. 

"  In  dieser  seiner  Erneuerung  und  Einkehrung  erschwinget  sich  der 
Geist  alsbald  ueber  sich,  gegen  die  gottliche  Finsterniss,  viel  geschwinder 
und  hoher,  als  ein  Adler  gegen  die  Soniie.  .  .  .  Hiervon  stebet  im  Buche 
Hiob  also  geschrieben  :  '  Dem  Manne  ist  der  Weg  verborgen,  und  Gott 
hat  ihn  umgeben  mit  Finsterniss,'  namlich,  mit  Finsterniss  der  Unbegreif- 
lichkeit  oder  Unerkennlichkeit  Gottes,  da  er  weit  iiber  alles,  dass  ihm 
zugeschrieben  werden  kann,  erhaben,  undganz  namen-,  form-,  und  bildlos 
ist,  ja  er  ubertrifft  darin  alle  Weise  und  alles  Wesen.  Und  dies  ist,  liebe 
Christen,  die  wesentliche  Einkehrung,  zu  der  das  Stillschweigen  der 
Nacht,  samt  ihrer  Ruhe  und  Einsamkeit,  sehr  viel  hilf t  und  niitzet.  Darum 
rathe  ich  einem  jeden  treulich,  wenn  er  vor  der  Mette  gut  geschlafen  hat, 
dass  er  sich  alien  seinen  Sinnen  und  sinnlichen  Kraften  gleichsam  entziehe, 
und  nach  verrichteter  Mette  mit  alien  seinen  Kraften  sich  iiber  alle  Bilder 
und  Formen  versenke,  ja,  iiber  alle  seine  Sinne  und  Kraf te  sich  erschwinge. 
Doch  solle  er  wegen  seiner  Kleinheit  und  Nichtigkeit  nicht  gedenken 
noch  sich  vornehmen  sich  der  vortrefflichen  Finsterniss  zu  nahen,  von 
welcher  ein  Lehrer  spricht:  'dass  Gott  eine  Finsterniss  sei  nach  allem 
Licht,'  sondern  zu  der  Finsterniss  der  Nichterkennung 
Gottes,  und  da  ergebe  er  sich  Gott  ganz  einfaltiglich,  frage  nichts,  bitte 
und  begehre  auch  nichts,  sondern  liebe  und  meine  nur  Gott,  und  zwar 
einen  solchen  unbekannten  Gott ;  ja,  in  seinen  unbekannten  Willen 
werfe  er  alle  seine  Sachen  und  Geschafte,  auch  seine  Gebrechen  und 
Siinden,  so  ihm  alsdann  einfallen,  und  dies  alles  mit  wirklicher  Liebe." 
Predigten  ii,  553. 


THE  NEGATIVE  PATH  381 

purification ;  second,  that  there  is  a  clear  self-contradic- 
tion in  trying  to  expel  all  desire  ;  third,  that  when  the 
deepest  will  attempts  to  subordinate  all  partial  desires 
by  setting  up  its  own  absolute  good  as  an  object  of 
meditation,  this  effort  is  notably   liable  to   substitute 
some  false  god  for  the  true  one.    Taken  together,  these 
three  results  amount  to  a  practical  demonstration  that 
the  attempt  of  worship,  hi  so  far  as  it  depends  upon  the 
mystic's  own  active  efforts,  is  impossible. 

There  must  be  some  way  of  cutting  short  these  infi- 
nite processes  of  self -preparation,  if  in  order  to  see  God 
one  must  in  fact  accomplish  a  pure  heart.  The  mystics 
have  not  failed  to  find  ways  of  summarizing  all  this 
preparation  in  a  single  act.  Ruysbroeck,  for  example, 
cuts  the  knot  by  a  stroke  of  will :  we  have  the  neces- 
sary humility  and  love  if  we  will  to  have  them.  In  the 
good-will  to  renounce  oneself,  the  renunciation  is,  for 
the  purposes  of  worship,  completed.  Santa  Teresa  has 
another  way  of  concluding  the  matter :  let  us  once 
clearly  see  and  acknowledge  our  defects,  and  in  that 
knowledge  be  free  from  them.  "  This  matter  of  self- 
knowledge,"  she  says,  "  must  never  be  put  aside.  .  .  . 
The  knowledge  of  our  sins  and  of  our  own  selves  is  the 
bread  which  we  have  to  eat  with  all  our  meats,  however 
pleasant  they  may  be,  in  the  way  of  prayer ;  without 
this  bread  life  cannot  be  sustained,  though  it  must  be 
taken  with  measure.  .  .  .  (But)  when  a  soul  beholds 
itself  resigned,  and  clearly  understands  that  there  is  no 
goodness  in  it  ...  why  should  it  be  necessary  for  it  to 
waste  its  time  on  this  subject?  From  foolish  devo- 
tions, Lord  deliver  us."  For  both  Teresa  and  Ruys- 
broeck  this  dismissal  of  the  processes  of  prolonged  self* 


382  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

discipline  is  made  possible  by  a  self-examination  which 
has  reduced  all  their  sinful  desire  to  one  category, 
namely,  pride :  and  it  is  the  summary  repudiation  of 
this  pride,  in  the  one  by  a  magnificent  will  to  be  hum- 
ble, in  the  other  by  a  clear  perception  of  its  nature,  that 
effectually  closes  the  earlier  stages  of  preparation. 

But  whether  in  one  way  or  another  these  efforts  are 
brought  to  an  end,  the  mystic  finds  himself  at  last  not 
trying,  but  waiting.  His  last  effort  is  to  destroy  all 
effort,  and  to  make  himself  wholly  passive.  It  seems, 
indeed,  as  if  the  attainment  of  passivity,  of  the  right 
kind,  were  the  whole  aim  of  these  preparations;  the 
act  of  worship  having  rather  to  clear  the  way  for  the 
assertion  of  some  other  power,  inner  or  outer,  than  to 
do  anything  of  its  own.  Just  how  this  passivity  is  to 
be  brought  about,  and  what  it  consists  in,  is  not  easy 
for  the  mystic  to  define.  He  uses  many  a  figure  to 
describe  it:  emptiness  (Ledigkeit),  silence,  permissive- 
ness (Lidekeit,  Lidelicheit,  lydende  Vernunft, — Tauler), 
poverty,  destruction  of  self,  inward  stillness  (innere 
Gelassenheit,  —  Suso),  nothingness  (in  the  sense  of  the 
"  0,  to  be  nothing  "  hymn),  even  idleness,  or  dormancy 
("Miissigkeit "), :  death,  extinction.  In  the  ideal  of 
passivity,  indeed,  we  come  upon  one  of  those  far- 
reaching  discoveries  of  religious  experience  which  take 
a  thousand  shapes  and  names,  and  enter  in  various 
degrees  into  all  phases  of  worship.  In  Quietism,  it 
comes  to  an  especial  cultivation  :  for  if  one  must  resort 

1  "  Alles  das  Gott  von  uns  haben  will,  das  ist,  dass  wir  mussig  seven 
und  ihn  Werkmeister  seyn  lassen  ;  waren  wir  ganz  und  gar  miissig,  so 
waren  wir  vollkommne  Menschen."  Tauler,  quoted  by  Karl  Schmidt,  in 
"Johannes  Tauler,"  p  120. 


THE  NEGATIVE  PATH  383 

to  passivity  in  the  end,  why  not  from  the  first.  But  in 
Luther's  appeal  to  grace,  rather  than  to  works,  his  reli- 
ance on  the  forgiveness  of  sins ;  in  the  self-abandon- 
ment of  conversion  ;  and  in  many  another  assertion  of 
the  "  feeling  of  absolute  dependence " ;  we  see  other 
forms  of  this  same  principle  of  passivity  which  com- 
pletes the  preparation  of  the  mystic.  « 

However,  it  is  obvious  that  there  can  be  no  question, 
here,  of  pure  passivity.  The  state  is  the  precise  opposite 
of  a  state  of  drifting,  or  of  psychical  indolence.  The 
will  to  worship  remains  to  distinguish  this  nothingness 
from  all  others.  The  mind  is  in  a  condition  of  power- 
fully directed  attention.  Such  as  the  term  "contem- 
plation" suggests.1  The  effect  of  all  these  various 
self -suppressing  efforts  has  been  to  lop  off  interfering 
and  distracting  movements  of  attention ;  whereby  all 
the  strength  of  these  inhibited  tendencies  has  been  told 
over  into  a  single  comprehensive  thrust  of  the  mental 
energies.  It  is  a  suppression  of  body  by  body ;  of 
desire  by  desire ;  of  activity  by  activity ;  in  sum,  a 
suppression  of  self  by  Self.  The  loss  of  self  and  of 
self-consciousness  of  which  the  mystics  often  speak,  a 
loss  concomitant  with  the  cessation  of  traffic  with  things, 
is  essentially  a  recalling  of  all  subordinate  and  partial 
selfhoods  into  the  one  master-self  of  all,  a  simplification, 
and  at  the  same  time  an  extreme  heightening  of  self-con- 
sciousness in  its  now  exclusive  relation  to  its  Absolute.2 

1  "  Contemplation,"  as  used  by  the  mediaeval  mystic,  implies  that  the 
effort  of  "  meditation,"  in  which  one  holds  the  object  before  the  mind  by 
force  of  will,  gives  way  to  a  state  in  which  the  object  attracts  and  holds 
attention  without  farther  conscious  effort. 

2  "  This  slumber  of  the  mind  resembles  at  first  a  negation  of  exist- 
ence, but  it  is  the  exaltation  thereof.     Nothing  perishes  in  us  but  the 


384  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

Something  deeply  paradoxical  there  is  about  this  volun- 
tary passivity  of  the  mystic,  like  the  motionlessness  of 
a  rapid  wheel  or  the  ease  and  silence  of  light.  And 
this  paradox  the  mystics  themselves  have  not  failed  to 
observe  and  study.  They  have  seen  that  there  is  an 
idle  passivity  which  must  by  all  means  be  ruled  out ; 
and  they  have  spared  no  effort  to  distinguish  between 
the  true  passivity  and  the  false.  Let  me  quote  a  few 
of  their  own  explanations. 

These  from  Molinos : 

"  By  not  speaking,  not  desiring,  not  thinking,  one  arrives 
at  the  true  and  perfect  mystical  silence  wherein  God  speaks 
with  the  soul,  communicating  himself  to  it,  and  in  the  Abyss 
of  its  own  Depth  teaches  it  the  most  perfect  and  exalted 
Wisdom.  .  .  .  Strive  to  be  resigned  in  all  things  with  silence, 
and  in  so  doing,  without  saying  that  thou  lovest  Him,  thou 
wilt  attain  to  the  most  perfect,  quiet,  effectual,  and  true  love." 

"  The  very  Virtues  which  have  been  acquired  and  not 
purified  are  a  hindrance  to  this  great  gift  of  the  Peace  of  the 
Soul,  and  the  more  so,  the  more  the  soul  is  dogged  by  an 
inordinate  desire  for  sublime  gifts,  by  the  wish  for  spiritual 
consolations,  by  sticking  to  infused  graces,  entertaining  her- 
self with  them,  and  desiring  more  of  them  in  order  to  enjoy 
them :  and  finally,  by  a  desire  of  being  great." 

"It  is  a  vulgar  error  of  those  who  say  that  in  Internal 
Recollection  or  Prayer  of  Rest  the  faculties  operate  not,  and 
the  soul  is  idle  and  inactive.  This  is  a  manifest  fallacy,  and 
belongs  to  those  who  have  little  experience,  because  although 
the  mind  operates  not  by  means  of  memory  nor  by  the  second 

person,  that  is  to  say,  the  limit.  ...  To  return  to  the  universal  is  to 
enlarge,  to  become  divine,  not  to  abolish  and  lose  oneself."  Simon,  Ecolc 
d'Alexandrie,  pp.  156-7,  218. 

1  The  Spiritual  Guide,  tr.  R.  Y.  Lynn  (with  liberties). 


THE  NEGATIVE  PATH  385 

operation  of  the  intellect,  which  is  judgment,  nor  by  the  third 
which  is  discourse  or  reasoning,  yet  it  operates  by  the  first 
and  chief  operation  of  the  understanding,  which  is  simple 
apprehension  enlightened  by  holy  faith,  and  aided  by  the 
divine  gifts  of  the  Spirit ;  and  the  will  is  more  apt  to  continue 
one  act  than  to  multiply  many,  so  that  the  act  of  the  under- 
standing as  of  the  will  is  so  simple,  imperceptible,  and  spirit- 
ual, that  hardly  the  soul  knows  it,  much  less  reflects  upon  it." 

These  from  Teresa : 

"  In  mystical  theology,  the  understanding  ceases  from  its 
acts  because  God  suspends  it.  We  must  neither  imagine  nor 
think  that  we  can  of  ourselves  bring  about  this  suspense." 

"  To  have  the  powers  of  the  mind  occupied,  and  to  think 
that  you  can  keep  them  at  the  same  time  quiet,  is  folly. 
There  is  no  great  humility  in  this  (trying  to  be  passive),  and 
though  it  be  blameless,  it  carries  a  sort  of  punishment  after 
it,  in  that  it  is  labor  thrown  away,  and  the  soul  is  a  little 
disgusted :  it  feels  like  a  man  who  preparing  to  take  a  leap  is 
held  back — he  has  used  up  his  strength,  and  is  yet  unable  to 
do  as  he  wished." 

"What  the  soul  has  to  do  at  those  seasons  is  nothing  more 
than  to  be  gentle  and  without  noise.  By  noise  I  mean  going 
about  with  the  understanding  in  search  of  words  and  reflec- 
tions whereby  to  give  God  thanks  for  this  grace,  and  heaping 
up  its  sins  and  imperfections  together  to  show  that  it  does  not 
deserve  it.  Let  the  will  quietly  and  wisely  understand  that 
it  is  not  by  dint  of  labor  on  our  part  that  it  can  converse  to 
any  good  purpose  with  God,  and  that  our  efforts  are  only 
great  logs  of  wood  laid  on  without  discretion  to  quench  this 
little  spark." 

And  these  from  Fenelon,  who  had  reason  to  feel  the 
force  of  the  Quietistic  discussion,  from  both  sides,  and  who 
speaks,  if  not  as  mystic,  yet  as  a  sympathetic  arbiter : 


386  WORSHIP  AND   THE  MYSTICS 

"All  passive  contemplation  reduces  itself  to  something 
very  simple.  It  is  a  tissue  of  acts  of  faith  and  love,  so  simple, 
so  direct,  so  peaceable,  and  so  uniform,  that  they  do  not  appear 
to  constitute  any  action,  but  a  repose  of  pure  union.  This  is 
why  St.  Francis  de  Sales  wished  to  reject  the  term  '  union ' 
for  fear  of  expressing  some  uniting  act  on  the  part  of  the 
soul:  he  would  have  it  called  a  simple  and  pure  Unity. 
Hence  also  it  is  that  this  contemplation  has  been  called  orison 
of  silence  or  of  quietude ;  hence  finally  that  it  has  been  called 
passive.  God  forbid  that  it  should  ever  be  thus  described 
for  sake  of  excluding  the  action  real,  positive,  and  meritori- 
ous of  the  will,  nor  acts  real  and  successive  which  must  be 
reiterated  every  moment.  It  is  called  passive  only  to  exclude 
the  self-interested  activity  or  empressement  of  the  mind,  when 
it  is  inclined  to  continue  some  agitation  in  order  to  feel 
and  see  its  own  operation,  which  if  it  were  more  simple  and 
unified  would  be  less  noticed." 

"  It  is  passive  as  a  feather  is  passive,  which  when  dry 
responds  to  every  touch  of  the  breeze,  but  when  wet  with  the 
dampness  of  its  own  heavy  desires  shows  an  inertia  which  is 
felt  as  a  real  object.  It  is  passive  as  the  mirror  of  the  lake 
is  passive,  which  when  its  own  motion  is  stilled,  is  able  to  re- 
turn faithfully  the  objects  whose  light  falls  upon  it ;  but  when 
agitated  by  the  breath  of  its  own  desires,  returns  these  same 
rays  in  a  broken,  disordered,  and  so  unintelligible  condition." 

IV 

This,  then,  is  the  preparation  of  the  mystic :  on  the 
whole,  a  negative  path  ;  an  activity  ending  in  a  volun- 
tary passivity,  destined  to  give  way  in  turn  to  an  invol- 
untary passivity  when  God  accepts  and  lifts  to  himself 
the  prepared  soul.  Its  history  is  that  of  an  activity  of 
self-suppression  which  must  itself  be  suppressed.  And 
what,  in  the  end,  does  it  amount  to?  Wherein  does 


THE  NEGATIVE  PATH  387 

it  differ  from  the  simple  act  of  thought,  the  "  lifting 
of  the  mind  to  God  "  ? 

First,  I  should  say,  and  most  obviously,  in  the  moral 
character  of  the  process,  in  the  ideal  of  the  '  pure  heart ' 
which  is  recognized  as  the  condition  of  finding  God 
in  worship. 

Second,  in  the  simplification  of  consciousness.  In- 
stead of  spinning  connections,  the  mystic  strives  to  be 
rid  of  connections,  and  to  reach  an  object  which  is 
behind  and  prior  to  all  distinctions.  He  has  practised 
recollection,  and  has  become  total.  He  wishes  to  be, 
rather  than  to  think ;  assuming  that  there  is  a  distinc- 
tion between  being  and  thinking. 

Third,  in  the  repudiation  of  effort.  What  the  mystic 
knows  will  be  empirically  known.  What  the  mystic 
wills,  will  be  willed  by  necessity.  The  worshipper  has 
exercised  his  freedom,  perhaps  the  first  and  last  absolute 
freedom  possessed  by  the  human  spirit,  to  consent  to 
an  empirical  apparition  of  the  real.1 

The  mystic  is  prepared  :  what  will  happen  to  him  ? 
Will  there  be  an  event  ?  Will  his  voluntary  passivity 
give  place  to  an  involuntary  passivity ;  and  will  he 
know  that  he  is  one  with  God  ?  The  mystic  has  been 
knocking  at  the  door  of  his  world,  an  outsider,  prepar- 
ing himself  inwardly  and  outwardly,  doubtless  with  a 
certain  sense  of  magic  and  mummery  about  it  all ;  as 

1  Royce's  often-quoted  phrase  which  describes  the  mystic  as  the 
"  thoroughgoing  empiricist  "  is  strikingly  true  of  the  mystic's  method  of 
knowing.  But  the  mystic's  peculiarity  is  that  he  applies  this  method  to 
objects  which  empiricists  generally  insist  cannot  be  given  in  any  such 
immediate,  unreasoned  manner,  namely  to  totals  not  to  elements;  to  souls, 
not  to  sensations ;  to  resultants  (like  history,  or  society)  not  to  factors ; 
and  finally,  to  God  himself. 


388  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

of  doing  things  whose  reason  he  does  not  see,  and 
which  through  hidden  laws  or  arbitrary  will  of  the  God 
will  have  an  effect  if  they  are  well  done.  Yet  the  true 
mystic  has  known  well  enough  that  his  experience  is  no 
adventitious  effect,  but  wholly  a  response  to  his  own 
meaning  and  within  his  own  unbroken  idea.  If  the 
effect  were  magical  and  external,  the  mystic  would  be 
thwarted,  —  he  would  not  consciously  have  been  with 
God  at  all.  What  he  reports  is,  that  he  has  been 
admitted;  that  from  being  an  outsider,  knocking  at 
the  door  of  things,  he  has  ceased  to  be  an  outsider  and  a 
subordinate.  He  uses  the  words  illumination,  union, 
sometimes  deification,  to  express  what  has  come  to 
him.  In  some  way  he  is  admitted  to  the  council  of  the 
maker  of  this  world  of  things.  He  has  become  an 
understander  of  the  heart  of  it.  And  in  evidence  of 
his  truth  he  is  able  to  walk  about  among  things  and 
men,  — do  we  say  as  an  alien?  — on  the  contrary, as  one 
for  the  first  time  fully  present  and  at  home,  able  to 
recognize  himself  and  God  in  whatever  declares  itself, 
able  to  open  himself  to  the  whole  of  experience. 

This  is  what  the  mystic  reports.  But  having  fol- 
lowed the  course  of  the  mystic's  own  volition,  and 
largely  in  the  mystic's  own  tongue,  we  must  now 
seek  further  light,  external  light,  such  as  psychology 
can  furnish,  upon  the  nature  of  this  experience,  and 
its  interpretation. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 
THE  PSYCHOLOGY   OF  MYSTICISM 

WHAT  is  the  experience  of  the  mystic  ?  And 
what  meaning  has  that  negative  path  for  us  of 
the  present  day?  To  the  mystic,  the  whole  meaning 
and  logic  of  worship  is  personal ;  and  there  is  no  more 
to  be  said  about  it  than  has  been  said.  He  has  come 
consciously  into  the  presence  of  God,  and  what  is  more, 
into  a  unity  of  will  with  him.  He  knows  nothing  of 
any  psycho-physical  facts  which  could  make  clearer  the 
significance  of  that  event.  On  the  contrary,  he  seems 
to  find  himself  —  though  perhaps  only  for  a  brief 
instant  —  free  from  the  body,  wholly  "  in  the  spirit," 
where  neither  mortal  thought  nor  mortal  psychology 
can  follow  him.  We  must  allow  the  mystic  the  first 
word  in  reporting,  and  also  in  interpreting,  his  experi- 
ence. But  while  he  dwells  upon  its  unique,  superlative, 
indescribable  aspects,  psychology  helps  our  understand- 
ing of  that  experience  by  finding  what  is  not  unique 
about  it,  what  analogies  it  has  in  more  commonplace 
experiences,  undertaking  thereby  both  to  describe  and 
to  explain  it.1 

1  The  mystic  himself,  as  we  have  noticed,  plays  the  psychologist  so 
far  as  the  beginnings  of  description  are  concerned ;  and  he  alone  can  prop- 
erly inform  us  of  the  inner  nature  of  his  experience.  But  his  description 
offers  the  clue  to  concrete  analogy ;  and  this  in  turn  to  more  scientific 
description  and  explanation. 

There  is  danger,  no  doubt,  in  pursuing   analogies  of  what  is  esseu- 


390  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

The  mystic  experience  is  unique  and  free,  but  not  in 
the  sense  that  it  has  no  analogies  and  no  ties  in  the 
world  of  common  experience.  The  fact  that  these  ties 
exist  is  to  be  seen  in  the  simple  circumstance  that  the 
experience  is  transient.1  For  if  union  with  God  were 
the  whole  story  of  mystical  experience,  there  could  be 
no  reason  why  that  moment  should  pass.  The  mystic 
himself  knows  very  well  that  his  vision  cannot  last,  so 
long  as  he  remains  a  human  being.2  Many  a  mystic 
has  expressed  regret  that  his  joy  could  not  endure,  but 
none  (so  far  as  I  have  found)  has  expressed  surprise. 
This  absence  of  surprise  may  show  that  the  immediacy 
of  the  experience  is  never  so  great  as  to  be  wholly  free 
from  outer  reference,  that  some  consciousness  of  the 
worldly  self  and  of  its  ties  remains.  The  mystic  has 
found  himself  in  a  region  where  the  gravitation  of  earth 

tially  a  religious  event.  The  religiousness  of  it  lies,  as  the  mystic  instinc- 
tively knows,  in  what  is  unique  and  can  be  told  only  in  the  personal 
language  of  religion.  The  religious  element  is  always  lost  among  its 
many  copies,  and  degraded.  Nevertheless,  this  is  the  only  way  in  which 
the  unique  can  permanently  hold  us.  We  must  run  the  risk  of  this  logs; 
and  when  analysis  is  finished  try  again  to  recover  the  original. 

1  It   is  hardly  necessary  to  recall   the   familiar   description  which 
William  James  has  given  to  the  class  of  experiences  he  proposes  to  call 
mystical :  they  are  ineffable  and  noetic,  usually  also  transient  and  passive 
(Varieties  of  religious  experience,  p.  380  f).     In  the  character  of  ineffa- 
bility,  the  indescribable  quality  of  the  experience  becomes  a  point  of 
psychological  description;   and  both  this  ineffability  and  the  transiency 
are  to  be  explained,  as  I  shall  try  to  show,  on  psychological  grounds. 

2  "  This  sublime  condition  is  not  of  permanent  duration.     It  is  only 
now  and  then  that  we  can  enjoy  this  elevation  (mercifully  made  possible 
to  us)  above  the  limits  of  the  body  and  the  world.     I  myself  have  realized 
it  but  three  times  as  yet,  and  Porphyry  not  once.     All  that  tends  to  purify 
and  elevate  the  mind  will  assist  you  in  the  attainment,  and  facilitate  the 
approach  and  recurrence  of  these  happy  intervals."     Vaughan,  Hours  with 
the  mystics,  vol.  i,  p.  81.    An  imaginary  letter  from  Plotinus  to  a  disciple. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MYSTICISM  391 

operates  but  slowly ;  but  that  it  still  operates  and  will 
claim  its  own,  he  seems  by  this  silent  confession  to  be 
fully  aware. 

Thus  mystic  experience  comes  within  the  range  of 
law,  and  probably  also  within  some  law  of  rhythm. 
That  is,  the  mystic's  elevation  is  transient  presumably 
because  it  is  a  phase  in  some  natural  rise  and  fall,  some 
organic  wave  perhaps,  in  experience.  If  so,  this  tran- 
siency, external  character  though  it  is,  will  offer  the 
most  favorable  angle  for  scientific  approach.  For  any 
rhythmic  movement  in  experience  reveals  not  only  an 
organic  bond,  but  a  law  of  connection  as  well,  through 
which  the  special  phase  in  question  is  bound  in  with 
the  before  and  the  afterward,  and  begins  to  be  in- 
terpreted.1 

1  The  idea  of  rhythm  with  its  organic  relatedness  (causal  or  other- 
wise), need  not  be  wholly  alien  to  the  mystic's  inner  meaning  —  not  more 
in  regard  to  the  forces  that  bear  him  up  than  in  regard  to  those  that  hold 
him  down.  The  logic  of  the  relation  between  the  worshipper  and  his 
God  is  indeed  wholly  personal  and  particular  —  not  magical  —  but  the 
worshipper  still  relies  upon  a  steadfastness  in  the  being  worshipped ;  he 
frequently  comes  to  look  upon  his  elevation  as  a  response  to  a  right 
approach  on  his  part,  as  some  function  of  the  condition  of  his  own  heart. 
He  holds  a  quasi-natural  adjustment  of  attitude  to  the  supernatural. 
Meister  Eckhart  says,  "  I  will  never  ask  God  to  give  himself  to  me  : 
I  will  ask  him  to  make  me  pure  of  heart.  For  if  I  am  pure,  God  must  of 
his  own  nature  give  himself  to  me,  and  flow  into  me."  "  Meister  eghart 
sprach  :  ich  wil  got  niemer  gebitten  das  er  sich  mir  gebe :  ich  wil  in  bitten 
das  er  mich  luter  mache  :  wan  were  ich  luter,  got  muest  sich  mir  geben 
von  siner  eigener  nature  vnd  in  mich  fliessen "  ( Wackernagel,  Spriiche 
deutscher  Mystiker,  in  Altdeutsches  Lesebuch,  col.  681).  The  Spruch 
continues  :  "  Wo  mit  kumet  man  zuo  luterkeit  ?  mit  einern  steten  iamer 
na  dem  einigen  guot,  das  got  ist.  Vnt  wo  mit  kumet  man  in  ein  jamer  ? 
mit  uernichten  sich  selben  vnt  mit  missevalle  alien  creaturen."  Thus  the 
mystic  himself  is  often  disposed  to  read  his  experience  as  a  course  of 
interaction  between  a  higher  and  a  lower  law  —  with  an  element  of  hnman 
freedom  in  the  circuit. 


392  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

This,  at  any  rate,  is  what  has  impressed  me  in  mysti- 
cism :  That  the  turning  away  from  the  world  in  the 
negative  path  of  worship  (together  with  the  mystic 
experience  itself  which  marks  the  limit  of  the  up-swing) 
and  the  turning  back  again  constitute  a  normal  rhythm 
or  alternation  which  has  many  analogies,  and  a  vital 
function  in  the  human  mind  capable  of  psychological 
expression.  The  marked  disconnection  between  the 
mystic  experience  and  the  usual  level  of  life,  which 
obscures  both  to  the  mystic  and  to  the  observer  the 
presence  of  any  organic  bond  between  these  levels,  has 
also  a  psychological  meaning.  In  the  present  chapter, 
I  shall  do  no  more  than  bring  forward  some  of  the 
analogies  which  help  to  interpret  (1)  the  rhythm, 
(2)  the  disconnection,  and  (3)  the  unsociality  of  the 
mystic's  life  circuit.  In  the  next  chapter,  I  shall  try 
to  bring  its  law  to  definite  terms. 

1.  Rhythm.  —  If  there  is  any  rhythm  in  life  which 
religion,  in  the  observances  of  worship,  follows  and 
cultivates,  it  is  something  more  than  the  simple  ebb 
and  flow  of  our  "animal  spirits."  Excitement  and 
depression,  high  spirits  and  low  spirits,  are  organic 
fluctuations  which  leave  their  mark  on  the  religious 
life  as  on  all  life.  Undoubtedly  there  is  a  kind  of 
vision  connected  with  the  high  places  in  this  vital 
rhythm,  which  resembles,  and  may  actually  develop 
into,  mystical  experience.  Variations  of  this  kind  do 
affect  most  markedly  our  capacity  for  fellowship,  and 
the  promptness  of  that  "  fusion  "  with  our  objects  which 
we  thought  characteristic  of  the  mystic  consciousness. 
I  can  conceive  it  possible  that  the  habit  of  worship 


THE   PSYCHOLOGY   OF  MYSTICISM  393 

might  take  possession  of  some  such  subtle  wave  in  our 
organic  life;  but  I  cannot  think,  as  do  certain  writers,1 
that  this  type  of  flux  brings  us  very  near  the  mystic's 
experience,  and  for  the  following  reasons : 

First,  quasi-mystical  moods  of  this  sort  are  as  likely, 
perhaps  more  likely,  to  come  over  the  mind  when  the 
physique  is  at  low  tide ;  as  in  fasting,  exhaustion,  weak- 
ness from  loss  of  blood  or  insomnia,  or  in  the  early  stages 
of  convalescence. 

Second,  if  mystic  experience  has  its  rhythm,  it  shows 
little  sign  of  regularity  —  it  is  not  periodic.  The  wor- 
shipper's will  and  conscience  take  part  in  the  affair, 
and  not  the  organic  wave  alone:  voluntary  decision  is 
interpolated,  as  in  the  circuit  of  nutrition.  It  is  not 
true  that  mystic  experience  mechanically  follows  wor- 
ship; there  is  a  certain  looseness  of  connection  between 
prayer  and  its  answer,  which  the  passivity  of  the  mystic 
implies.  But  the  preparation  of  mind  and  the  act  of 
consent  must  enter  into  the  history  of  the  event  at  some 
previous  time. 

Third,  there  is  no  depression  which  corresponds  in 
constancy  and  prominence  to  the  mystic's  elevation. 
The  elevation  of  the  mystic  is  not  in  such  wise  above 
normal  that  it  must  be  compensated  by  a  corresponding 
below-normal.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  to  be,  in  some 
sense,  another  normal.  Something  of  its  content  and 
quality  tends  to  become  a  permanent  possession  of  con- 
sciousness; which  would  not  be  the  case  if  it  were  simply 

1  See  especially  Godfernaux,  "  Cette  oscillation  constante  du  ton  vital 
eat  bien,  semble  't  il,  1'aspect  physiologique  propre  du  sentiment  religieux 
.  .  .  Quiconque  e*prouve  le  sentiment  religieux  est  un  ext-atique  a  quelque 
degreV'  Revue  philosophique,  vol.  53  (1902),  pp.  164,  162. 


394  WORSHIP  AND   THE  MYSTICS 

an  extreme,  or  "hyper-tension."  There  comes  a  time 
in  the  life  of  some  of  the  mystics  when  the  vision  of 
God  is,  as  they  assert,  a  continuous  experience,  and  the 
semblance  of  rhythm  disappears.1 

These  considerations  lead  me  to  judge  that  the  mystic's 
ascent  and  return  are  not  to  be  understood  as  simply 
an  unusually  pronounced  oscillation  of  vital  tone.  But 
perhaps  they  also  imply  that  the  rhythm  itself  is  unnec- 
essary. May  not  the  very  circumstance  that  the  meaning 
of  the  mystic  experience  is  to  be  built  into  the  continuous 
level  of  consciousness,  show  that  the  two  levels  of  expe- 
rience belong  together;  that  the  alternation  is  accidental, 
and  to  some  extent  pathological?  Delacroix,  whose 
masterly  studies  of  the  mystics  put  us  all  in  his  debt, 
inclines  to  regard  whatever  rhythm  there  is  as  something 
to  be  overcome ;  and  as  something  that  is  overcome 
in  the  long  experience  of  the  greater  mystics.2  After 
much  painful  experiment  and  mistake,  such  persons 
as  Teresa,  Madame  Guyon,  and  Suso,  emerge  into  a 
period  of  serene  and  powerful  activity,  from  which  the 
fitfulness,  the  heights  and  depths,  the  interruptions 
and  disturbances,  of  the  earlier  enthusiastic  devotions 
have  disappeared. 

But  I  must  doubt  whether  this  alternation  is  essentially 
pathological  or  whether  it  is  ever  overcome :  I  must  doubt 

1  "  My  soul  is,  as  it  were,  in  a  fortress  with  authority,  and  accord- 
ingly does  not  lose  its  peace  .  .  .  The  imaginary  visions  have  ceased,  but 
the  intellectual  vision  of  the  Three  Persons  and  of  the  Sacred  Humanity 
seems  ever  present."     Teresa  to  the  Bishop  of  Osma,  May  1581.     "Cette 
vie  divine  devient  toute  naturelle  a  Tame  .  .  .  Ici  1'oraisonest  1'action;  et 
Faction  est  1'oraison:  tout  est  e'gal,  tout  est  indifferent  a  cette  ame  .  .  . 
Ici  1'extase  se  fait  pour  ton  jours  et  non  pour  des  heures."     Madame 
Guyon,  Torrents  232,  248.     Quoted  by  Delacroix.  Etudes,  143,  148. 

2  Etudes  d'histoire  et  de  psychologic  du  mysticisme,  esp.  ch.  ii,  vi,  xl 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MYSTICISM  395 

it  if  only  from  the  fact  that  worship  and  mystic  experi- 
ence involve  an  exclusive  occupation  of  attention  which 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  is  incompatible  with  simulta- 
neous attention  to  other  affairs,  and  vice  versa.  "  When 
attention  is  turned  in  one  of  these  directions,  it  is  in 
some  degree  withdrawn  from  the  other.  I  cannot  at 
the  same  moment  be  conceiving  of  God  as  the  only 
being  of  worth,  and  yet  of  my  life  —  this  fragmentary 
life  —  as  itself  a  matter  of  worth.  I  alternate.  .  .  . 
(One)  requires  a  certain  narrowing  of  his  vision,  a  certain 
exclusion  of  the  infinite  aspects  of  his  task,  in  order  to 
perform  that  task  well."  Thus  Professor  Palmer  states 
the  situation.1  If  worship  has  any  vital  function  to 
perform,  it  must  alternate  with  other  things,  the  necessity 
of  rhythm  lies  somehow  in  the  nature  of  my  practical 
attention.2 

1  G.  H.  Palmer,  The  Field  of  Ethics,  pp.  181,  173. 

2  The  mystics  found  various  ways  for  expressing  a  belief  that  some 
such  alternation  is  not  a  matter  of  choice,  but  a  result  of  the  structure  of 
human  nature;  as  in  such  words  as  these: 

"  Now  the  created  soul  of  man  hath  also  two  eyes.  The  one  is  the 
power  of  seeing  into  eternity,  the  other  of  seeing  into  time  and  the  crea- 
tures, of  perceiving  how  they  differ  from  each  other  as  aforesaid,  of  giving 
life  and  needful  things  to  the  body,  and  ordering  and  governing  it  for  the 
best.  But  these  two  eyes  of  the  soul  of  man  cannot  both  perform  their 
work  at  once;  but  if  the  soul  shall  see  with  the  right  eye  into  eternity, 
then  the  left  eye  must  close  itself  and  refrain  from  working,  and  be  as 
though  it  were  dead.  For  if  the  left  eye  be  fulfilling  its  office  toward 
outward  things;  that  is,  holding  converse  with  time  and  the  creatures; 
then  must  the  right  eye  be  hindered  in  its  working;  that  is,  in  its  contem- 
plation. Therefore,  whosoever  will  have  the  one  must  let  the  other  go." 
Theologia  Germanica,  Winkworth,  ch.  vii. 

To  Plotinus  and  Pseudo-Dionysius,  the  two  alternate  directions  of  the 
mind  had  a  metaphysical  meaning:  they  symbolized  the  emanation  and 
reflux  which  were  supposed  to  make  up  the  cosmic  history;  and  more  than 
this,  they  were  parts  of  that  cosmic  rhythm  itself. 

Fe'nelon  has  his  usual  judicious  comments  to  make  on  the  notion  of  per- 


396  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

I  am  driven  therefore  to  look  for  further  analogies 
among  those  normal  alternations  such  as  sleeping  and 
waking,  work  and  recreation,  conflict  and  co-operation, 
society  and  solitude,  hungers  and  satisfactions  of  various 
types.  The  fact  that  much  of  the  early  elevation  is 
built  into  the  later  level  of  continuous  living  may  be 
interpreted,  in  no  very  far-fetched  manner  perhaps,  as 
akin  to  the  assimilation  of  a  meal.  The  experience 
seems  in  fact  to  have  supplied  the  subject  with  a  certain 
moral  fuel  as  well  as  with  cognitive  material.  His  ina- 
bility to  bring  its  content  to  immediate  expression  is  to 
be  understood  by  the  fact  that  this  supply  is  still  rela- 
tively external  to  him  and  requires  a  normal  interval  to 
be  made  his  own ;  as  in  time  it  is  made  his  own.  Rhythm 
of  this  type  would  then  last  at  any  rate  as  long  as  the 
subject  continues  to  grow.  Approximate  continuity  is 
a  sign  of  old  age  in  mysticism ;  just  as  the  gradual 
obliteration  of  the  sharp  rhythm  of  sleep  and  waking  is  a 
sign  of  physiological  old  age.  Alternation  lies  deep  in 
the  nature  of  things  psychical  as  well  as  physiological : 
it  is  the  fundamental  method  of  growth.  I  am  inclined, 
therefore,  to  regard  the  mystic  experience  as  a  normal 
incident  in  the  attainment  of  a  new  psychical  level; 
and  no  exceptional  incident,  but  one  which  in  various 

petual  orison,  or  "spiritual  marriage."  "  There  is  such  a  thing  in  this 
life  as  a  state  habitual,  though  not  entirely  invariable,  in  which  the  most 
perfect  spirits  perform  all  their  deliberate  action  in  the  presence  of  God, 
and  for  love  of  him  .  .  .  This  referring  of  all  voluntary  action  to  our 
unique  end  is  the  perpetual  orison  enjoined  by  Christ,  and  by  Saint  Paul 
•when  he  said,  Pray  without  ceasing.  But  this  orison  should  never  be  con- 
founded with  contemplation  pure  and  direct  (which)  has  not  the  same 
species  of  perpetuity:  because  it  is  often  interrupted  by  acts  of  the 
various  virtues  necessary  to  all  Christians."  Explication  des  maxiraes 
des  saints,  Art.  xxv. 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MYSTICISM  397 

forms  and  degrees  is  a  recurrent  event  in  every  per- 
son's life. 

This  may  stand  as  a  rude  hypothesis  which  will  place 
mystic  experience  in  an  organic  relation  to  the  rest  of 
life.  We  may  sharpen  this  conception  by  considering 
now  the  relative  discontinuity  which  seems  to  exist 
between  mystic  experience  and  the  ordinary  level. 

2.  Disconnection.  —  The  traditional  religious  mystic 
reaches  a  point  of  ecstasy  in  which  he  is  as  thoroughly 
detached  from  his  waking  world  as  is  the  sleeper.  And 
as  in  the  case  of  sleep,  this  disconnection  follows  upon 
a  voluntary  effort  to  be  effortless,  when  his  preparation 
has  put  him  into  the  hands  of  some  agency  beyond 
himself.  The  absorbed  thinker  is  also  detached  from 
the  world,  and  the  absent-minded  man,  and  the  person 
who  falls  into  a  "brown  study":  in  some  respects,  the 
mystic's  abstraction  more  resembles  these  than  the  lax- 
ity of  sleep.  But  again,  as  in  the  case  of  sleep  the  sac- 
rifice of  time  and  of  complete  active  consciousness  is 
regarded  as  a  natural  means  of  conserving  both  life 
and  time,  so  the  mystic  may  be  justified  in  regarding, 
as  he  does,  his  self-abandonment  as  a  paradoxical 
necessity,  not  more  remarkable  than  sleep,  for  main- 
taining his  spiritual  integrity. 

Disconnection  is  the  aspect  of  mysticism  which  the 
observer  is  most  inclined  to  resent  and  condemn  as 
abnormal.  The  mystic,  on  the  other  hand,  has  prized 
it  most  highly  :  for  to  be  "  carried  away  "  is  the  chief 
sign  that  supernature  has  taken  the  place  of  nature. 
But  both  the  critical  observer  and  the  mystic  might 
profit  by  considering  that  the  element  of  "mystery  "  or 


398  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

"  ineffableness "  in  mystic  experience  is  largely  if  not 
completely  due  to  the  fact  of  disconnection  alone,  not 
to  any  inherent  mysteriousness  or  unnaturalness  in  the 
content  of  the  experience.  Psychologically,  mystery  is 
felt  whenever  there  are  two  bodies  of  experience  not  in 
perfect  communication,  quite  apart  from  the  question 
whether  the  one  or  the  other  is  inherently  wonderful  or 
weird.  Mystery  does  not  lie  in  either  of  the  two  bodies 
by  itself ;  it  expresses  the  effort  of  each  to  make  terms 
with  the  other,  and  the  beginning  of  success.  It  is  the 
state  of  mind  of  one  who  begins  to  see.  Mystery  is 
thus  the  characteristic  quality  of  every  incipient  idea, 
not  yet  wholly  seized  by  the  mind.  And  the  mystic 
may  be  regarded,  I  think,  as  one  who  is  confronted 
quite  empirically  with  a  body  of  new  experience  and 
idea  in  such  wise  that  he  is  a  possessor  of  two  bodies 
of  experience,  neither  of  which  he  can  doubt :  both 
must  be  true,  and  he  does  not  understand  how  both 
are  true. 

This  is  no  uncommon  state  of  mind.  Such  an  expres- 
sion as  the  following  seems  to  me  quite  typically  mys- 
tical :  "  How  came  this  creation  so  magically  woven  that 
nothing  can  do  me  mischief  but  myself?  ...  If  I  will 
stand  upright,  the  creation  cannot  bend  me."  Here 
stands  Emerson  with  the  weight  of  appearances  against 
him,  sure  of  "  the  creation,"  yet  equally  sure  of  his 
own  immunity ;  confessing  that  he  cannot  understand 
how  both  assurances  can  be  woven  into  one  fabric, — 
using  therefore  the  word  "magical."  The  mystic  might 
be  broadly  described  as  the  man  who  is  willing  to  drop 
one  world  of  assurance  while  he  seizes  another,  confident 
that  reality  will  harmonize  them  both,  though  he  cannot 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MYSTICISM  399 

yet  grasp  the  idea  which  does  harmonize  them.  Inabil- 
ity to  bring  the  two  experiences  together  tends,  it  is 
true,  to  cast  doubt  for  a  time  upon  the  reality  of  the 
one  not  present:  and  the  religious  mystic  is  one  for 
whom  another  world  than  this,  or  another  stratum  of 
experience,  has  gained  such  substantial  certainty  that 
the  reality  of  everyday  experience  must  suffer  this  kind 
of  passing  doubt.  But  the  true  mystic  is  he  who  holds 
to  the  reality  of  both  worlds,  and  leaves  to  time  and 
effort  the  understanding  of  their  union.  This  kind  of 
discontinuity  in  experience  (such  in  part  as  Emerson 
pleads  for  in  his  arraignment  of  anxious  consistency) 
seems  to  me  a  condition  of  mental  soundness  and  health, 
as  well  as  of  mental  growth. 

There  is  some  deep-going  practical  principle  here 
concerned,  whose  existence  we  can  note  without  at 
present  trying  to  determine  its  law.  It  is  a  principle 
which  suspends  the  operation  of  the  ideals  of  reason, 
from  time  to  time,  without  in  the  least  questioning  or 
supplanting  those  ideals.  We  must  have  consistency 
in  the  end;  we  must  have  connectedness;  we  must 
have  unity :  but  for  the  sake  of  having  this  ultimate 
unity  and  order,  anarchy  and  discontinuity  must  have 
their  moment.  That  sort  of  self-possession  which  is 
made  of  continuous  rationality  must  be  held  subject  to 
self-abandonment,  when  the  hour  of  empirical  truth 
arrives.  And  the  hour  of  truth  is  always  present. 
Idolaters  of  self-possession,  as  we  are  :  do  we  not  see 
that  every  pulse  of  consciousness  is  full  of  the  tumult 
and  wonder  of  these  plunges  into  the  ununified  and 
returns  therefrom?  that  sensing,  listening,  accepting 
the  hint  of  any  honest  emotion,  every  merest  decision 


400  WORSHIP  AND   THE  MYSTICS 

such  as  the  instants  of  living  are  made  up  of  —  all  of 
these  involve  some  commitment  to  the  unknown,  some 
such  willing  embrace  of  a  momentarily  broken  ration- 
ality? The  emotion  itself  is  but  the  call  of  the  new 
idea  which  has  its  overt  connections  yet  to  make  with 
this  system  of  mine ;  passion  is  but  a  more  impetuous 
commitment  to  an  insight  of  larger  scope  and  of  larger 
destructive  (and  reconstructive)  implications.  All  enthu- 
siasms, whether  of  devotion  or  anger  or  love  or  courage, 
are  alike  in  this  :  all  alike  spurn  continuity  and  seize 
the  insight  which  the  moment  offers  as  a  new  world  of 
truth,  whose  unity  with  the  old  may  be  cared  for  in 
due  time.  And  has  not  passion  also  such  a  tide  as 
the  mystic  knows,  which  after  the  critical  moment  of 
consent  substitutes  its  own  motion  for  the  will,  now 
apparently  passive,  of  the  worshipper?  Some  cult  of 
discontinuity,  strongly  resembling  the  mystic's  breach 
with  the  world,  we  may  thus  see  everywhere  in  the  inti- 
mate working  of  our  mental  life.  The  disconnection 
which  the  mystic  practises  is  so  far  countenanced,  and 
vaguely  explained. 

The  mystic,  we  may  say,  simply  brings  his  discontin- 
uity into  the  open  and  makes  an  avowed  principle  of  it. 
We  see  why  it  is  that  no  person  whose  god  is  conven- 
tion and  self-rule  can  be  a  mystic.  In  the  typical 
mystic  temperament  we  expect  to  find  a  certain  open- 
ness of  spirit,  such  as  readily  accepts  a  present  inspira- 
tion as  its  law.  The  encasements  of  mental  attitude  in 
such  persons  are  never  fast-set :  the  limberness  of  their 
inner  substance  promises  well  for  continuance  of  growth. 
At  his  worst,  the  mystic  is  impulsive  and  childish  ;  at 
his  best  he  retains  something  of  childhood,  its  tender- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF   MYSTICISM  401 

ness,  its  freshness  of  impression,  its  unsatiated  wonder, 
its  generosity  :  he  has  that  simplicity  and  teachableness 
which  are  found  in  the  very  young  and  the  very  great. 
He  may,  for  this  reason,  be  a  demonstrative  person 
(the  "  gift  of  tears "  was  once  regarded  as  a  saintly 
attribute) ;  or  he  may,  for  the  same  reason,  seem  to  live 
in  perpetual  calm  :  in  any  case,  he  is  one  whose  attach- 
ment in  the  Absolute  is  so  secure  that  he  has  no  fear  in 
embracing  any  insight  which  can  gain  the  consent  of 
that  side  of  his  consciousness,  though  for  the  present  it 
can  claim  no  other.  (Here  perhaps  we  begin  to  break 
through  into  the  theory  of  the  mystic  disconnectedness, 
and  the  continuity  behind  it;  but  we  shut  that  prospect 
for  the  present,  and  return  to  our  psychology.) 

Some  degree  of  openness  to  discontinuity  in  experi- 
ence is  evidently  a  part  of  deeper  practical  wisdom. 
But  does  this  general  principle,  whatever  it  may  be, 
valid  for  these  partial  ventures  in  experience,  —  does 
this  principle  explain  or  justify  such  radical  and  total 
disconnection  as  the  mystic  practises  ?  For  the  mystic, 
strictly  speaking,  is  the  man  whose  disconnection  is 
made  between  the  whole  system  of  things  and  ideas 
temporal  on  the  one  side,  and  the  heart  of  the  eternal 
on  the  other :  whereas  the  subdued  "  mysticism  "  of  our 
ordinary  life  merely  flits  from  one  body  of  ideas  to 
another  within  that  world-system.  Radical  mysticism, 
religious  mysticism,  with  its  sweeping  negation  and 
equally  sweeping  affirmation,  seems  to  sever  a  man  from 
his  fellows  as  well  as  from  nature :  it  tends  to  make 
him  solitary,  anti-social,  and  useless ;  to  give  him  over 
to  subjectivity.  We  are  not  inclined  in  our  time  to 
rate  highly  any  solitary  aspect  of  religious  thought  or 


402  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

practice.  And  yet  I  incline  to  think  that  just  this 
radical  social  disconnection  is  also  an  essential  part 
of  mysticism. 

3.  Solitude.  —  All  thoroughgoing  mysticism  is  soli- 
tary, so  far  as  human  companionship  is  concerned  :  we 
must  first  be  clear  about  that.  There  are  phenomena 
of  religious  history  that  look  much  like  mass-mysticism, 
and  have  been  interpreted  as  such :  religious  dances, 
dramas,  festivals,  revivals,  in  which  the  white-heat  of 
social  consciousness  becomes  the  generator  of  mystical 
enthusiasms.  But  even  in  these  somewhat  tumultuous 
and  disorderly  variations  of  our  theme,  the  mass-con- 
sciousness forms  the  level  from  which  the  individual 
departs :  he  is  not  a  mystic  until  his  own  spirit  has 
made  its  solitary  leap  to  God,  like  a  tongue  of  flame 
out  of  the  midst  of  the  fire. 

Much  of  what  we  call  "  social  life  "  moves  on  a  sim- 
ilar principle  —  that  of  passing  from  hand  to  hand  a 
function  which  in  any  one  hand  is  a  solitary  function : 
each  one  in  turn  becomes  "it,"  takes  upon  himself  alone 
the  difficulty  in  question,  learning  by  his  own  experi- 
ence what  otherwise  he  sees  only  from  the  outside. 
Whoever  helps  to  sustain  any  social  structure  is  alone 
just  in  so  far  as  he  is  responsible  :  and  he  comes,  for  the 
most  part,  to  his  solitary  social  position  through  having 
wrestled  with  some  angel  in  more  literal  isolation  from 
other  human  ken.  The  initiate  must  go  down  alone 
into  the  grave ;  though  initiation  is  on  the  whole  a 
social  ceremony.  And  so,  whether  we  have  in  mind  an 
orgy  of  Dionysus  or  a  meeting  of  the  society  of  Friends, 
it  is  individual  seizure  by  the  spirit  which  marks  the 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  MYSTICISM  403 

moment  of  religious  success.1  We  do  not  understand 
solitude  until  we  see  that  it  can  ride  on  the  back  of  any 
whirl  of  sociality  however  furious ;  its  pang  may  be  the 
more  poignant  because  the  utmost  limit  of  common 
possession  has  been  tested  in  an  immediately  preceding 
moment.  He  who  merely  imitates  is  but  a  false  mystic 
—  for  the  thing  to  be  imitated  is  a  burst  of  original 
impulse:  he  who  is  entranced  by  social  suggestion  is 
but  a  false  mystic  —  for  the  inner  core  of  what  his 
social  environment  requires  of  him  is  the  violent  subdual 
of  the  social  bond  by  the  superior  energy  of  the  divine 
rapport.  He  alone  is  utterly  unsocial  who  refuses 
when  his  own  watch  comes  to  go  out  and  meet  the  abso- 
lute in  the  darkness.  Solitude,  I  say,  is  the  essence  of 
mysticism :  and,  I  add,  the  basis  of  its  supreme  social 
importance. 

For  it  is  the  most  dangerous  things  that  are  the  most 
important.  We  of  this  age  have  come  to  fear  solitude 
and  with  it  all  mysticism  because  solitude  is  the  home 
of  stagnant  growths  and  morbid  consciousness,  because 
it  is  the  crowning  curse  of  all  vices  and  itself  a  vice 
even  in  religion.  We  see  in  it  only  the  danger  of  los- 
ing objectivity,  which  is  indeed  its  essential  peril.  But 
consider  the  mystic's  intention,  which  after  all  is  the 
thing  to  be  judged  :  his  intention  is  that  his  absolute 

1  Though  the  early  ascetics  of  Egypt  lived  in  communities,  their 
dwellings  appear  to  have  been  individual,  and  each  had  its  place  for  entire 
solitude.  W.  M.  F.  Petrie,  Personal  Religion  in  Egypt,  p.  68.  The  same 
is  true  of  the  early  monks  of  Ireland,  so  I  am  told  by  Mr.  C.  A.  Bennett, 
who  supplies  me  with  the  following  note:  "  With  many  of  their  establish- 
ments were  connected  '  diserts,'  lonely  spots  in  woods  or  mountains,  to 
which  from  time  to  time  the  individual  monk  might  retire  for  solitary 
meditation,  fasting,  and  prayer.  The  cenobitic  never  wholly  replaced  the 
eremitic  ideal  in  Ireland. ' '  Cf .  Gougaud,  Les  ChrStientes  Celtiques,  pp. 
103-104. 


404  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

Object  shall  gain  in  strength  pari  passu  with  his  entrance 
into  himself.  Mysticism  in  its  true  character  is  pre- 
cisely the  redemption  of  solitude:  it  is  the  process 
which  enters  one  step  farther  than  we  have  yet  explored 
into  the  heart  of  our  own  infinite  subjectivity,  and 
reclaims  that  new  increment  for  the  general  use,  in  the 
form  first  of  a  deepened  morality  and  art.  If  our  own 
age  with  its  growing  sociality  and  immersion  in  the 
manifold  is  little  mystical,  it  is  also  true  of  it  that  the 
power  of  evaluating  solitude  and  therewith  the  depth  of 
self -consciousness  is  little  developed  :  in  so  far  as  this 
age  of  ours  has  flattened  and  shallowed  out,  it  is  because 
it  has  so  far  lost  its  mystical  instincts. 

I  cannot  doubt  that  the  value  which  attaches  to  the 
partial  discontinuities  of  living  in  our  spiritual  economy 
attaches  also  to  the  complete  disconnection  which  the 
typical  religious  mystic  practises :  the  latter  is  governed 
by  the  same  law  as  the  former.  We  cannot  live  well,  I 
judge,  unless  there  is  something  in  our  lives  which  offers 
us  from  time  to  time  the  possibility  of  absolute  detach- 
ment and  solitude:  that  which  is  necessary  and  useful 
in  part  is  necessary  and  useful  also  in  whole.  The 
mystic  is  simply  the  person  who  does  consciously  and 
with  the  whole  man  that  which  we  are  all  doing  spon- 
taneously and  in  fragmentary  fashion  in  every  moment 
of  our  effective  living.  Doubtless,  then,  the  rhythm  of 
mystic  experience  has  its  law,  such  as  will  place  it  with 
the  other  normal  rhythms  of  experience.  But  as  the 
mystic  rhythm  is  the  most  comprehensive  of  all,  I  shall 
refer  to  this  law  simply  as  the  principle  of  alternation ; 
and  shall  now  try  to  state  its  meaning. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY   OF    MYSTICISM    (continued)  —  THE 
PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION 

rilHE  principle  of  alternation,  so  far  as  the  program 
JL  of  daily  living  is  concerned,  is  neither  abstruse  nor 
unknown.  Of  the  various  goods  which  go  to  make  up 
a  balanced  existence,  we  naturally  treat  each  in  turn  as 
if  it  were  a  sole  and  sufficient  object ;  we  do  not  under- 
take to  pursue  them  all,  or  many,  at  once.  All  good 
things  do  doubtless  belong  together;  but  each  good 
thing,  we  recognize,  is  to  be  pursued  separately.  The 
difficulty  lies  in  inferring  from  the  parts  to  the  whole : 
that  is  to  say,  in  seeing  that  the  alternation  which  is 
obviously  necessary  as  between  one  partial  object  and 
another  is  also  necessary  as  between  all  partial  objects 
and  the  whole.  But  just  this,  I  think,  is  what  worship 
means :  that  the  whole  must  become  a  separate  object 
of  pursuit,  taking  its  turn  as  if  it  also  were  a  part,  as  if 
it  were  another  among  the  many  goods  of  practical 
occupation.  Let  me  illustrate  this  principle  as  we  com- 
monly recognize  it  among  these  many  partial  interests, 
and  then  carry  it  on  to  the  total  alternation  of  religion. 


We  may  best  appreciate  the  principle  of  alternation 
by  what  it  is  contrasted  with,  the  principle,  namely, 
that  all  things  belong  together  and  should  be  pursued 


406  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

together.  To  this  contrasting  principle  we  pay  much 
respect :  old  dualisms  as  between  soul  and  body,  form 
and  matter,  God  and  world,  have  become  tabooed  in 
practice  as  they  have  become  obsolete  in  theory.  We 
believe  in  the  concrete,  in  the  soul  that  is  one  with  body, 
the  God  that  is  immanent  in  the  world :  and  we  are 
inclined  to  make  practical  programs  according  to  this 
belief.  If  soul  and  body  belong  together,  we  must 
cultivate  both  together.  If  man  and  woman  belong 
together,  we  must  educate  both  together.  If  all  beauty 
is  one  beauty,  then  the  highest  art  will  be  composite — 
we  must  have  perfumed  music,  dramatic  music,  Wag- 
nerian  opera,  or  in  German  fashion,  music  with  beer, 
Gemutlichkeit,  and  a  fine  outlook.  But  for  the  most 
part  some  sense  of  fitness  saves  us  from  turning  our 
concrete  doctrine  too  thoroughly  into  a  program.  Our 
inferences  become  fantastic ;  and  without  abandoning 
our  belief  in  the  concrete,  we  recognize  a  fundamen- 
tal dualism  or  pluralism  in  the  necessities  of  conduct. 
Keflection  and  action  belong  together,  but  we  cannot 
carry  on  both  at  once,  with  success :  each  best  finds  its 
due  influence  on  the  other  if  each  has  its  time  of  whole- 
hearted attention.  We  cannot  endure  form  without 
substance,  whether  in  men  or  books  or  things,  nor  sub- 
stance without  form ;  these  also  belong  together  and 
perfection  in  either  will  bring  perfection  in  both:  but 
not  waiting  for  perfection  in  either,  each  must  be 
acquired  in  its  own  way  and  time,  by  some  degree  of 
separate  attention.  In  larger  concerns,  liberty  and 
authority  belong  together :  but  in  the  course  of  history 
an  expansion  of  one  alternates  with  an  expansion  of  the 
other,  each  developing  characteristic  abuses,  preparing 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  407 

the  way  for  an  outburst  of  the  other  with  more  or  less 
disturbance  and  passion. 

The  whole  man,  in  short,  is  not  to  be  found  in  any 
one  moment  —  nor  in  any  one  man.  The  dreamer  and 
the  man  of  affairs  are  forever  finding  their  way  together; 
the  spirit  of  peace  is  forever  breeding  with  the  spirit  of 
war,  in  more  successful  syntheses  of  character : 1  yet 
specialization  has  its  infinite  work  to  do,  —  the  concrete 
is  its  deposit,  not  its  occupation. 

So  it  is  with  all  the  antithetical  goods  of  the  world ; 
and  so  presumably  is  it  also  with  that  most  comprehen- 
sive antithesis  between  God  and  the  whole  world  of 
visible  work.  I  believe  in  the  "concrete  universal"  as 
a  metaphysical  doctrine ;  God  and  the  world  belong 
together  —  neither  is  anything  without  the  other  :  but 
from  this  true  generality  it  no  more  follows  than  in  the 
above  practical  matters  that  God  and  the  world  can  yet 
be  best  known  or  won  together.  The  concrete  univer- 
sal cannot  either  in  this  case  or  in  any  other  be  forthwith 
made  into  a  maxim  for  historical  conduct.  God  and  the 
world,  I  maintain,  must  be  worked  in  with  one  another 
forever:  forever  they  must  be  pursued  in  alternation. 
We  have  now  to  follow  out  this  theory. 

II 

In  every  art  we  recognize  a  distinction  between  tech- 
nique and  spirit.  We  care  little  for  one  without  the 
other ;  yet  we  know  that  technique  has  its  own  right, 

1  In  classic  times,  the  pursuits  of  commerce  and  city  life  actually 
unfitted  men  for  fighting;  the  antique  contempt  for  the  merchant  was  based 
in  part  upon  a  psychological  fact.  To-day,  commerce  has  its  good  quota 
of  combativeriess  ;  and  an  industrial  country  is  never  without  an  efficient 
army. 


408  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

and  must  be  cultivated,  as  if  for  technique's  sake  alone : 
the  spirit  has  its  own  moment,  in  the  intervals  of  tech- 
nical study, — and  the  spirit  represents  the  whole.  Here 
the  whole  alternates  with  the  parts. 

The  art  of  winning  knowledge  is  not  different  from 
other  arts  in  this  respect.  We  know  what  the  tools  for 
intellectual  discovery  are — facts  in  infinite  variety  and 
extent,  measurements,  classifications,  knowledge  of  all 
existing  theories:  he  who  would  win  truth  must  fill 
himself  as  full  as  possible  of  science,  of  history,  of 
social  motives,  of  the  immense  richness  of  the  cosmos. 
But  we  know  too  that  there  comes  a  moment  when 
these  very  things,  his  necessary  means,  become  his 
poisons:  this  is  the  moment  at  which  they  become  him- 
self. The  man  becomes  identical  with  his  learning,  is 
nothing  but  his  learning:  he  cannot  use  it  because  he 
has  lost  sight  of  the  thing  it  is  not,  he  has  forgotten 
what  it  is  for.  His  technique  cannot  serve  him  unless 
he  can  see  beyond  it.  That  self  must  be  withdrawn 
and  re-oriented:  it  must  turn  its  back  upon  itself,  and 
revert  to  the  whole. 

This  practical  necessity  is  embedded  in  the  very  cat- 
egories with  which  science  carries  on  its  work.  It  is  in 
the  psychology  of  our  knowing  processes  that  we  find 
the  barest  and  simplest  view  of  this  alternation  in  which 
the  whole  is  one  member.  For  as  a  process  in  time, 
knowing  has  to  ply  not  only  from  fact  to  fact,  from 
part  to  part  of  experience,  but  also  between  all  such 
parts  and  some  conception  of  the  whole.  Beside  all  the 
work  of  observation  there  is  the  work  of  hypothesis, 
the  alternation  between  induction  and  deduction,  laying 
hold  on  a  whole  and  returning  from  the  whole  to  the 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  409 

several  parts.1  The  scientist  is  occupied  with  phenom- 
ena ;  but  beside  the  phenomena,  the  concept  of  substance 
in  some  form  or  other  (whether  of  matter,  or  energy, 
or  law,  or  soul)  must  take  a  place  as  one  other  object 
of  necessary  attention.  Any  concrete  knowledge  of  a 
society,  a  race,  an  age,  etc.,  must  be  reached  by  a 
similar  interplay  of  categories :  beside  the  extending 
of  knowledge,  there  must  be  a  deepening  of  knowl- 
edge, an  attempt  to  grasp  the  'spirit'  of  things,  their 
principle,  formula,  essence, — in  brief,  their  one,  their 
whole.  It  is  not  otherwise  with  our  knowledge  of 
individual  men.  If  I  wish  to  know  a  person,  I  must 
pursue  acquaintance  in  two  antithetical  directions:  I 
must  learn  to  know  him  in  what  he  does,  at  his  periph- 
ery, in  the  various  expressions  of  his  action  in  the 
world  of  our  common  objects;  and  I  must  also  learn 
to  know  him  by  the  pursuit  of  his  central  '  substance/ 
by  the  intuitive  seizure  in  intimacy  of  the  unity  from 
which  all  these  plural  deeds  are  derived. 

And  knowledge  of  the  greater  whole  evidently  follows 
the  same  principle  as  the  knowledge  of  these  lesser 

1  There  is  a  tendency  among  logicians  at  present  to  make  a  concrete 
of  induction  and  deduction  as  of  everything  else  ;  and  to  assert  that 
neither  process  exists  apart  from  the  other.  Ostwald  asserts  that  there 
is  no  deductive  science,  but  there  is  wohl  a  deductive  procedure,  which 
must  be  understood  in  connection  with  induction.  Well,  let  it  be  so: 
there  is  an  inductive  procedure  and  a  deductive  procedure,  and  these  are 
two  different  procedures,  and  do  in  the  history  of  research  alternate  with 
each  other.  That  is  all  ;  whether  we  draw  the  lines  of  any  science  cleanly 
about  one  or  the  other  procedure  is  of  no  consequence.  The  alterna- 
tion itself  will  never  be  wiped  out.  Analogically  speaking,  the  quest  of 
induction  is  scientific  prayer  ;  and  the  discovery  of  a  whole,  in  answer  to 
such  prayer,  a  scientific  mystical  experience.  Inductions  are  not  to  be 
taken  by  violence,  they  are  received  in  passivity.  The  question  of  induc- 
tion is  treated  further  in  chapter  xxxi  below. 


410  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

wholes.  My  world  at  its  periphery  is  *  experience/ 
'  life ' ;  at  its  center  it  is  '  substance/  '  reality/  (  God.' 
We  must  know  both  aspects  in  turn,  and  conceive  them 
as  we  can  together.  My  total  picture  of  this  world  is 
drawn  like  an  artist's  sketch  —  not  by  a  line  continuous 
and  adequate  in  the  field  of  vision,  but  by  a  series  of 
lines  which  err,  and  which  are  broken  in  their  course  by 
recurrence  to  the  (undrawn)  idea.  God  is  in  the  world, 
no  doubt :  the  plural  and  visible  aspect  of  things  is 
divine  also  —  that  is,  if  we  are  able  to  see  it  so.  But 
if  we  are  to  prosper  in  such  an  interpretation  of  the 
world  (which  certainly  sets  upon  that  world  a  high 
value)  we  need  from  time  to  time  to  have  caught  the 
original  meaning  of  '  divinity '  in  some  immediate  experi- 
ence.1 We  must  recur  to  the  whole. 

Herewith  we  come  upon  the  principle  of  alternation 
in  its  full  meaning,  which  is  best  seen  in  the  history  of 
the  will.  In  all  our  practical  living  we  human  beings 
are  pursuing  some  total  good  under  shapes  and  by 
means  which  are  inadequate  to  it,  and  so  partly  false  to 
it.  We  are  obliged  from  time  to  time  to  reject  what 

1  It  is  not  accurate  to  say  that  we  are  unable  to  hold  in  a  single  view 
the  many  and  the  one,  the  appearances  and  the  reality,  the  periphery  and 
the  center,  the  world  and  God.  To  some  extent  we  must  do  this:  in 
attending  to  the  many,  we  may  not  lose  sight  of  the  one,  at  the  risk  of 
losing  the  many  also;  and  in  attending  to  the  one  we  may  not  lose  sight 
of  the  many,  at  the  risk  of  the  vanishing  of  the  one.  The  one  must 
always  be  known  as  the  one  of  these  many.  The  situation  is  rather  this: 
that  in  the  process  of  attending  to  and  dealing  with  the  many,  the  vision 
of  the  One  tends  to  vanish  and  must  be  renewed  by  empirical  presence  of 
its  object  Likewise,  in  lifting  the  mind  to  the  One,  the  sense  of  the 
many,  with  which  the  One  must  be  thought,  tends  to  fade,  and  God  loses 
all  meaning  to  the  mind  that  regards  him.  The  exclusive  direction  of  the 
mind  whether  to  the  many  or  to  the  One  is  a  self-destroying  process : 
whereas  the  alternating  of  attention  may  be  a  self-developing  process. 


THE   PRINCIPLE   OF  ALTERNATION  411 

we  have  done,  to  withdraw  our  forward-moving  efforts, 
and  revert  to  the  whole :  not  because  of  the  fact  of 
error  (for  there  are  errors  which  may  be  remedied  on 
the  spot  without  change  of  direction),  but  because  of 
the  type  of  error,  —  it  is  an  error  which  involves  not 
only  our  tools,  but  our  selves,  the  operators.  We  begin 
to  get  into  our  own  way  and  so  to  defeat  our  own  work. 
We  can  find  no  radical  remedy  except  in  getting  rid  of 
that  self ;  and  no  radical  way  of  abandoning  that  self 
except  by  reverting  to  the  whole.1 

This  is,  in  outline,  the  meaning  of  the  principle  of 
alternation.  There  is  something  about  our  practical 
attention  to  any  part  or  parts  which  turns  self-defeating, 
and  requires  such  complete  abandonment  of  the  parts, 
and  reversion  to  the  whole  as  religion  has  demanded, 
that  whole  which  is  different  from  all  parts.  And  there 
is  also  something  about  practical  attention  to  the  whole 

1  The  principle  of  alternation  is  the  supplement  of  the  principle  of 
relativity  both  of  knowing  and  of  willing  Both  principles,  of  alternation 
and  of  relativity,  are  historical  principles  :  they  apply,  that  is,  to  knowing, 
not  to  knowledge.  It  is  not  knowledge  that  is  relative  ;  it  is  the  temporal 
act  of  knowing.  It  is  my  momentary  position  as  a  being  in  time  and 
space  which  determines  that  at  any  moment  I  may  see  but  one  side  of  a 
shield  —  and  this  limitation  I  cannot  overcome.  But  such  knowledge  of 
the  whole  as  I  have  leads  me  by  alternating  my  position  to  repair  the 
defect  of  my  historical  knowing.  Now  knowledge  of  the  whole,  such  as 
guides  this  alternation  between  relative  parts,  is  also  a  matter  of  degree. 
And  in  so  far  as  I  fail  to  overcome  my  relativity  at  any  point,  or  find 
myself  sinking  deeper  into  it,  I  am  forced  to  turn  away  from  all  parts, 
and  directly  seek  a  whole  that  will  place  them.  Thus  I  alternate  between 
whole  and  parts,  and  thereby  transcend  relativities  as  they  make  them- 
selves felt.  Every  detail  of  psychical  life  shows  this  method  of  action. 
Attention  in  its  minuter  physiology  is  a  rapidly  alternating  process,  per- 
petually withdrawn  from  its  object  and  instantaneously  replaced;  in  the 
instant  of  its  withdrawal  having  recovered  a  better  poise  and  a  steadier 
termination,  having  wiped  away  the  film  of  relativity  with  which  self  and 
object  had  begun  to  obscure  each  other. 


412  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

which  turns  self-defeating,  and  can  only  be  recovered 
by  occupation  with  the  parts.  Hence  the  movement 
of  our  temporal  life  must  swing  between  them.  But 
in  order  to  see  more  clearly  what  is  meant  by  this 
"reverting  to  the  whole,"  we  must  look  deeper  into 
that  self-defeating  tendency  which  makes  this  alterna- 
tion necessary. 

Ill 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that  every 
human  effort  produces  something  it  does  not  want; 
and  this  by-product  sooner  or  later  checks  the  effort. 
We  may  even  say  that  every  effort  produces  something 
of  the  opposite  of  what  it  aims  at :  the  strain  to  see 
brings  blindness ;  the  strain  to  think  brings  absence  of 
mind ;  strained  self-consciousness  brings  loss  of  self- 
possession;  careful  calculation  invites  failure;  sci'upu- 
lous  morality  develops  the  immoral ;  high  aims  bring 
specialization  and  deformity.  These  are  facts,  but  what 
is  the  reason  for  them? 

The  reason,  as  I  see  it,  lies  as  far  back  in  the  nature 
of  things  as  the  fact  that  the  soul  of  man  has  a  body, 
appears  in  space,  and  works  out  its  destiny  in  time. 
Whatever  is  the  cause  and  meaning  of  our  physical 
existence,  that  same  cause  makes  our  temporal  efforts 
self-checking  and  that  same  cause  requires  us  to  recover 
our  spiritual  integrity  by  bringing  the  whole  down 
among  the  parts,  and  treating  it  as  a  thing  of  time  and 
space  like  ourselves. 

That  which  makes  existence  in  time  important  to 
spirits  such  as  we  are  is  the  power  of  voluntary  atten- 
tion :  it  is  the  specific  mark  of  our  individual  selfhood, 
and  it  is  also  the  place  of  our  freedom.  All  the  work 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  413 

of  life,  with  its  manifold  interests,  can  be  described  as 
the  sphere  of  our  voluntary  attention  and  action.  This 
characteristic  marks  off  all  our  occupation  with  the  parts 
from  our  occupation  with  the  whole  in  worship,  which 
in  the  mystic  experience  itself  becomes  passive,  that  is 
to  say,  effortless.  The  contrast  between  mystic  experi- 
ence and  '  life '  is  at  the  same  time  a  contrast  between 
effortless  attention  and  effortful  attention.  But  in  this 
effortful  attention  we  find  the  chief  mark  of  our  per- 
sonal liberty  ;  and  it  is  just  this  liberty  which  is  bought 
with  the  great  price  of  artificiality,  and  separation 
from  nature. 

For  in  this  voluntary  business  of  life,  we  are  not 
merely  pursuing  a  good  which  is  already  made ;  we  are 
constructing  our  good,  we  are  making  good.  That 
same  absolute  good  which  the  mystic  simply  finds, 
appears  to  our  common  action  as  something  which  we 
can  win  only  by  making  it  our  own,  reproducing  it,  or 
realizing  it  by  our  own  labors.  All  practical  life  may 
thus  further  be  described  as  a  transition  from  a  self 
that  is  given  to  us  (by  birth  or  otherwise)  to  a  made- 
self.  And  it  is  here  that  we  inevitably  separate  our- 
selves from  nature.  For  all  such  practical  constructive 
effort  must  have  its  plan,  its  aims,  its  standards ;  and 
whatever  aims  and  standards  we  self-consciously  adopt 
and  define  to  ourselves  as  '  our  good '  are  so  many 
theories,  types,  generalities,  —  never  quite  the  whole 
truth.  Since  we  must  model  our  conduct  on  some 
definite  plan,  the  practical  will  is  necessarily  theo- 
retical, and  so  far,  abstract,  incomplete.1  We  gain 

1  The  will  works  in  the  concrete  —  that  is  true.     But  what  it  con- 
sciously sets  up  in  the  concrete  world  are  its  own  ideas,  mouldings  and 


414  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

firmness  in  the  saddle  of  practical  self-possession  only 
by  condemning  to  death  a  certain  margin  of  our 
consciousness.1 

This  inherent  defect  in  the  operation  of  voluntary 
attention  becomes  more  pronounced  and  radical  as  effort 
continues ;  simply  because  every  voluntary  effort,  assum- 
ing as  it  must  that  its  standards  are  adequate,  that  it 
knows  what  it  wants,  strengthens  the  assumption  by 
acting  upon  it,  and  so  deepens  the  breach  between  the 
artificial  self  and  the  natural  self.  We  are  never  occu- 
pied with  any  object  without  becoming  to  some  degree 
fascinated  by  that  object  and  assimilated  to  it ;  as  the 
object  is  partial,  so  we  who  deal  with  it  become  partial.2 
As  a  conscious,  self-making  agent,  "  the  individual  is 
always  wrong  " ;  yet,  just  as  such  a  free,  effortful,  self- 
making  agent,  the  individual  must  always  assume  that 
he  is  right. 

We  are  thus,  by  "  our  finite  situation,"  bound  in  a 
predicament  from  which  our  active  selves  cannot  shake 
free,  though  the  ultimate  knower  in  us  is  not  involved 
in  it.  Ambition  and  duty,  all  use  of  conscious  freedom, 
all  work,  in  short,  develops  of  itself  an  inner  opposition, 
or  spiritual  checkage.  For  this  loss  of  margin,  as  the 
artificial  self  becomes  identified  with  its  own  assump- 
tions and  objects,  is  a  progressive  impoverishment  of 

improvements  upon  a  given  reality,  pseudo-individual  objects,  imitations 
of  the  concrete.  Never  yet  has  the  conscious  will  of  man  constructed  by 
its  own  effort  alone  a  living  being.  Our  explicit  practicality,  I  repeat,  is 
theoretical  and  abstract. 

1  Here  commences  the   building   of   "  subconsciousness "     See  the 
note  on  this  subject  at  the  end  of  the  book. 

2  This  is  the  "  relativity  "  to  which  the  human  will  is  subject ;  we 
cannot  act  in  the  world  of  matter  without  becoming  material ;  we  cannot 
use  our  freedom  without  becoming  to  some  degree  a  thing. 


THE   PRINCIPLE   OF  ALTERNATION  415 

that  whole-idea,  whose  use,  as  we  thought,1  gives  all 
objects  what  value  they  have.  In  order  that  my  various 
practical  enterprises  should  go  on  well,  it  is  necessary 
that  my  various  ends  should  maintain  their  worth ; 
and  in  order  that  they  may  hold  their  worth  and  inter- 
est, my  whole-idea  must  be  active  in  all  my  occupa- 
tions —  I  must  be  thinking  with  my  whole-idea,  and 
efficiently.  But  the  incident  of  voluntary  activity 
is  to  undermine  the  effectiveness  of  this  whole-idea.2 
And  the  result  is  a  spiritual  fatigue,  analogous  to,  but 
neither  identical  nor  contemporaneous  with,  physical 
fatigue.3 

The  symptoms  of  this  spiritual  checkage  are  not  hard 
to  recognize.  They  are  simply  the  inevitable  assump- 
tions of  action  become  hardened  into  fixed  illusions. 
We  find  ourselves  in  the  first  place  regarding  the  several 
objects  of  our  pursuit  as  though  they  were  absolute, 
real  in  themselves  and  good  in  themselves ;  and  we 
cannot  see  them  otherwise  than  with  this  exaggerated 
importance.  We  cannot  bear  to  lose  any  of  them ;  for 
every  loss  is  a  dead  loss.  And  if  we  win,  we  are  still 
dissatisfied,  for  every  gain,  too,  is  a  dead  gain,  reaching 
no  further  in  its  value  than  the  object  then  and  there 

1  See  above,  chapter  xi. 

1  Deliberate  narrowing  of  the  range  of  idea,  in  one's  occupation  with 
the  part,  is  the  essence  of  sin.  Freedom  may  thus  add  to  the  breach 
between  natural  self  and  artificial  self  a  positive  barrier.  For  the  present 
we  may  ignore  this  further  element  in  the  "  separation  between  man  and 
God." 

8  No  doubt  this  fatigue  of  the  idea  is  also  physical  in  the  same  way 
that  all  spiritual  limitation  is  physical :  that  is  to  say,  there  is  a  physio- 
logical expression  for  it.  It  is  none  the  less  a  concern  primarily  of  ideas ; 
it  has  a  necessity  of  the  same  order  as  that  which  makes  us  temporal 
beings  at  all.  In  the  end  it  is  a  matter  of  religion,  and  can  only  be  suc- 
cessfully approached  from  the  religious  quarter. 


416  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

gained,  leaving  infinite  further  gains  to  be  made.  No 
gain  is  so  great  as  to  seem  to  me  a  gain  of  the  whole. 
My  world  of  will-objects  has  become  pluralistic; 
and  my  practical  problem  has  become  essentially  hope- 
less. Another  symptom  is  criticism.  For  all  work 
and  construction  must  be  critical,  that  is,  selective.  All 
voluntary  activity  takes  up  the  critical  attitude  toward 
what  is,  and  resolves  to  bring  about  something  better, 
by  first  conceiving  something  better.  The  practical 
temper  has  to  separate  the  good  from  the  bad :  and 
since  its  world  has  taken  on  this  pluralistic  and  abso- 
lute appearance,  the  good  qualities  and  the  bad  qualities 
of  things  and  of  men  seem  independent  of  each  other. 
We  think  that  we  can  have  the  one  without  the  other 
and  we  insist  on  it.  We  have  no  interest  in  a  possible 
union  of  the  good  and  the  bad ;  we  draw  a  clean  line 
between  them ;  we  are  condemnatory  and  exacting,  for 
the  sake  of  our  own  standards.  We  grow  mighty  in 
discrimination,  and  terrible :  we  grow  puny  in  synthesis 
and  creative  power.  A  further  consequence  and 
symptom  is  that  our  responsible  temper  finds  nothing 
in  the  present  that  satisfies  it.  It  is  alienated  from  its 
present  moment:  it  is  romantic,  in  the  sense  that  it 
seeks  its  good  elsewhere,  far  away,  in  a  place  very  dif- 
ferent from  anything  it  finds  in  experience.  As  the 
over-prepared,  over-equipped,  over-trained  person,  with 
his  eye  habitually  fixed  on  some  future  moment  as  the 
moment  of  his  action,  is  indeed  prepared  for  everything 
except  for  the  judgment  "  Now  is  the  time " ;  so  the 
soul  over-steeped  in  actual  work  loses  capacity  to  believe 
in  the  presence  of  the  good  worked  for.  Its  sympathy 
flows  forth  with  difficulty ;  and  that  attitude  of  "  fusion '' 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  417 

which  we  were  recently  describing  as  mystical  in  char- 
acter, finds  little  scope  for  exercise.  The  one  and  good 
is  not  here  —  that  is  all. 

All  of  these  common  symptoms  of  spiritual  fatigue, 
I  repeat,  are  nothing  more  than  the  habitual  assump- 
tions of  action  taken  as  whole  truth.  They  picture 
nothing  but  the  abstracted  soul  of  the  active  man ;  the 
common  materialism  of  strenuosity,  deepened  into  a 
belief  in  the  "  abstract  universal."  All  these  symptoms 
sum  themselves  up  in  this :  that  I  find  nothing  indi- 
vidual in  my  world.  I  find  no  present  particular  of 
which  I  can  say  —  Here  is  the  standard  embodied :  I 
find  no  object  in  which  my  whole-idea,  with  its  high 
power  of  synthesis  of  good  and  bad,  can  find  end- 
less occupation.  My  universals  have  parted  company 
with  particulars.  I  find  illustrations  of  value  ;  things 
good  in  this  respect  and  bad  in  that ;  specimens  of 
general  concepts  ;  but  no  individual. 

And  losing  contact  with  the  really  individual  aspect 
of  the  world  beyond  me,  I  also  lose  contact  with  the 
individual  in  myself.  My  artificial  self  becomes  the 
only  self  I  am  acquainted  with.  This  self  is  built  up 
according  to  self-conscious  standards  of  criticism,  uni- 
versal in  character,  derived  largely  from  my  social  con- 
sciousness, and  passing  current  in  the  world  just  because 
I  have  thus  dutifully  universalized  myself.  It  is  a  well- 
known  selfhood — known,  in  fact,  through  and  through, 
empty  of  mystery — well-behaved  also,  conventionally 
confirmed  in  its  own  successful  technique  of  self-hand- 
ling, the  man  of  the  city  and  of  the  world ;  betraying  at 
every  point  the  failure  of  privacy,  of  recourse  to  the  indi- 
vidual I  am,  the  sealing  of  spontaneity,  the  formal  hard- 


418  WORSHIP  AND   THE  MYSTICS 

ening  of  the  heart,  the  unhumanizing  of  men  by  over- 
contact  with  humanity,  the  strain  of  general  attitudes 
not  wholly  naturalized  in  oneself. 

To  live  thus  with  the  universal,  the  abstract  univer- 
sal of  action,  and  with  one's  own  artificial  and  dutiful 
embodiments  thereof,  is  the  beginning  of  death. 

IV 

The  effort  of  work,  then,  provides  for  its  own  arrest. 
Work,  simply  as  a  voluntary  application  of  ideas,  does 
gradually  disintegrate  those  values  for  which  alone  work 
exists.  In  all  literalness  life  ceases  to  be  worth  living, 
and  death  in  some  shape  will  be  sought.  Into  the 
midst  of  all  effort,  dutiful  or  otherwise,  there  must  fall 
soon  or  late  a  sense  of  the  aimlessness  of  work,  a  ques- 
tioning and  denial  of  worth-whileness,  a  consciousness 
of  moral  wear  and  tear  in  the  determined  pursuit  of 
objects  whose  value  is  not  wholly  convincing,  a  need 
for  recovering  sincerity  and  spiritual  poise. 

And  this  new-born  need,  still  of  the  same  moral  stuff 
that  first  launched  the  work,  now  reverses  the  direction 
of  action,  and  turns  naturally  toward  some  object  whose 
value  is  convincing  without  any  effort,  toward  enjoyment 
in  some  form  or  other.  Pleasure,  recreation,  friendship, 
the  companionship  of  men  and  women,  beauty —  all 
these  recall  the  outgoings  of  ambition  and  moral  effort, 
and  reunite  a  man  with  his  natural  appreciation.  Some- 
thing in  common  these  all  have  with  the  quest  of  the 
mystic,  and  with  the  mystic  experience  itself.  And 
worship  is  the  whole  which  includes  them  all. 

It  is  not  primarily  external  failure  which  brings  man 
to  worship.  It  is  simply  the  internal  decay  of  the  incen- 


THE   PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  419 

tive  of  work,  the  drooping  of  the  sails  of  ambition,  the 
falling  out  of  humor  with  one's  own  humor,  the  mys- 
terious vanishing  of  the  raison  d'etre  of  life  as  a  sphere 
for  the  theoretical  will.1  And  whatever  recovers  the 
worth  of  living  by  recovering  the  natural  vigor  of  the 
whole-idea  is  worship,  or  a  part  of  worship. 

It  may  not  be  at  once  obvious  how  worship  is  related 
to  all  these  other  means  for  recovering  our  values  ?  — 
there  is  much  here  that  has  no  resemblance  to  worship, 
nor  any  visible  need  of  it.  For  spiritual  as  well  as  for 
bodily  fatigue,  physical  nature  has  its  simple  advice  to 
give,  and  ancient  human  experience  its  rule  of  thumb. 
As  the  Egyptian  proverb  has  it,  "The  archer  hitteth 
the  target,  partly  by  pulling,  partly  by  letting  go ;  the 
boatsman  reacheth  the  landing,  partly  by  pulling,  partly 
by  letting  go."  2  No  man  can  earn  the  good  by  con- 
sciously mastering  all  its  conditions ;  so  the  race  long 
ago  found  out.  Critical  responsibility  must  be  limited ; 
physiology  and  the  self-righting  mechanisms  of  the 
world  must  do  what  self-consciousness  fails  and  will 
always  fail  to  accomplish.  All  such  counsels  of  pas- 
sivity, laissez  faire,  partial  death,  are  parts  of  practical 
wisdom  and  have  no  apparent  necessary  connection  with 
religion. 

But  these  things  all  need  religion  to  finish  them  just 
because  they  are  relatively  un-self-conscious.  Our  free 
and  self-conscious  personality  ought  not  to  be  satisfied, 
and  cannot  be  satisfied,  with  a  restoration  purely  by 

1  All  these,  taken  together  with  the  sense  of  one's  own  responsibility 
for  the  result,  i.  e.,  that  it  is  due  to  self-assertion.  The  sense  of  sin  re-reads 
and  complicates,  but  does  not  essentially  alter,  the  problem. 

8  Instructions  of  Ptah  Hotep  to  his  son. 


420  WORSHIP  AND   THE  MYSTICS 

mechanism  or  by  laissez  faire.  In  fact  there  can  be 
no  such  thing  as  a  recovery  of  value  which  is  essentially 
physiological  or  subconscious ;  the  idea  must  be  recov- 
ered as  cm  idea,  that  is  to  say,  consciously  and  inten- 
tionally.1 Worship,  we  may  say,  is  the  self -conscious 
part  of  the  natural  recovery  of  value  ;  it  is  that  part, 
therefore,  which  assigns  all  other  parts  their  place  and 
meaning. 

Sleep  wins  our  consent  without  offering  any  account 
of  its  method  or  meaning  —  or  perhaps  a  minimum 
account.  In  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  there  is  something 
more  of  the  positive  and  intentional.  To  pleasure, 
friendly  association,  and  art  we  turn  still  blindly  and 
instinctively ;  but  with  some  dawning  grasp  of  the  idea 
in  what  we  do.  There  is  a  free  and  deliberate  element 
in  the  reversal  of  action.  In  all  of  these  we  perceive 
the  play  of  the  universal  in  the  particular,  a  natural 
union  of  the  two  given  without  effort,  and  rejoining  us 
with  the  individual  element  in  our  experience.2  But  in 

1  This  implies  that  in  the  complete  alternation  there  is  something  of 
the  voluntary  self  which  is  not  abandoned  :  if  this  self  is  to  know  the 
meaning  of  its  own  recovery,  it  cannot  be  wholly  in  abeyance  while  the 
process  of  recovery  takes  place.  There  is  something  in  all  our  artificial 
efforts  which  is  absolutely  right,  and  cannot  be  withdrawn  :  namely,  the 
task  itself  of  being  self-governing,  world-building,  self-making  beings.  It 
is  our  nature  to  be  artificial,  and  our  right  to  be  self-knowing  :  whatever 
postulates  and  selfhoods  have  to  be  negated  and  revised,  they  are  not 
these.  Freedom  has  the  peculiarity  that  it  can  recognize  its  own  relative 
failure,  and  define  more  or  less  clearly  what  it  lacks  ;  and  in  so  far  as  it 
can  define  its  need,  it  can  consciously  pursue  it.  Thus  the  preparation 
of  the  mystic  never  surrenders  its  intentionality,  even  when  it  is  most 
passive. 

3  To  Kant's  mind,  it  is  the  communicability  of  the  aesthetic  judg- 
ment, the  universal  validity  to  which  it  aspires,  that  stamps  it  at  once 
as  an  affair  in  which  thought  is  engaged.  But  he  cannot  identify  it  with 
objective  reason,  nor  with  explicit  reason  ;  hence  he  explains  it  as  a  sub- 


THE   PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  421 

worship  the  idea  has  broken  through  and  become  explic- 
itly an  object  of  search ;  the  soul  deliberately  seeks 
the  One,  the  individuality  of  the  world,  as  a  present 
object  of  experience. 

Everything  that  may  still  be  to  us  an  object  of 
immediate  and  effortless  appreciation  will  take  part  in 
this  search.  Hence  worship  naturally  allies  itself  out- 
wardly, as  well  as  inwardly,  with  recreation,  social  enjoy- 
ment, and  beauty.  Worship  uses  these,  and  goes 
beyond  them  :  it  recognizes  in  them  the  absolute  which 
is  its  own  and  discards  the  rest ;  puts  behind  its  back 
all  but  the  One  which  is  in  all,  and  is  the  condition  of 
them  all.  This  final,  sacrificial  aspect  of  worship  — 
the  negation,  or  rather  subordination,  of  all  partial 
loves  —  is  the  act  which  alone  can  make  these  loves 
immortal :  it  is  the  conscious  possessing  of  their  neces- 
sary condition. 

Thus  worship  adds  the  touch  of  unity  and  self-con- 

jective  play  of  the  faculties  of  knowledge  in  an  "  Erkenntnis  iiberhaupt." 
"  Also  muss  der  Geiniitszustand  der  eines  Gefiihls  des  freien  Spiels  der 
Vorstellungskrafte  zu  einem  Erkenntnisse  iiberhanpt  sein."  And  of  what 
Vorstellungskrafte  ?  "  Einbildungskraft,  f iir  die  Zusammensetzung  des 
Mannichfaltigen  der  Anschauung,  und  Verstand  fiir  die  Einheit  des  Be- 
griffs,  der  die  Vorstellungen  vereinigt."  Kritik  der  Urteilskraft,  p.  62. 
We  know,  in  general,  well  enough,  what  this  means  :  the  sense  of  the 
inner  enlivenment,  and  lightening  at  the  same  time,  of  the  action  of  our 
"  powers  "  in  the  presence  of  beauty,  as  if  a  smooth  place  had  been  found 
and  these  powers  were  not  more  in  harmony  with  each  other  than  with 
the  reality  which  they  appreciate.  It  is  essentially  free  play,  and  reflec- 
tive, but  not  subjective. 

Kant  notes  the  relatively  effortless,  self-continuing  character  of  the 
experience  of  beauty  thus  :  "  Sie  hat  (eine)  Causalitat,  den  Zustand  der 
Vorstellungen  selbst  und  die  Beschaftigung  der  Erkenntnisskrafte  ohne 
weitere  Absicht  zu  erhalten.  Wir  weilen  bei  die  Betrachtung  des 
Schonen,  weil  diese  Betrachtung  sich  selbst  starkt  und  reproducirt." 
Ibid.,  p.  68. 


422  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

sciousness  to  the  whole  body  of  our  natural  spiritual 
recovery.  It  is,  I  repeat,  nothing  more  than  doing  with 
the  whole  self,  and  consciously,  that  which  in  blinder 
and  more  fragmentary  fashion  we  are  doing  at  every 
moment  of  our  waking  lives,  and  especially  in  the 
moments  of  partial  return,  such  as  we  have  mentioned. 
The  mystic  is  he  who  knows  that  his  insight  must  be  an 
event  in  time,  and  that  it  is  his  right  as  a  self-conscious 
being  in  time  to  seek  for  it.  The  man  who  prefers  to 
leave  his  religion  in  the  obscure,  in  its  diffused  and 
partial  forms,  is  the  man  who  puts  the  prize  of  life  upon 
vagueness  and  the  unexplicit.  The  mystic,  on  the 
other  hand,  who  adds  worship  to  all  the  rest,  the  mystic 
is  the  man  who  prizes  the  overt,  the  definite,  and  the 

literal  in  religion. 

V 

The  motive  of  the  mystic,  then,  is  something  quite 
different  from  moral  ambition.  In  the  active  part  of 
the  mystic's  preparation  for  worship,  the  moral  motive 
may  still  be  visible :  it  may  still  be  touched  by  a  sense 
of  the  importance  of  work,  of  various  humane  interests, 
as  if  it  were  for  the  sake  of  these  ends  that  one  now 
turns  his  back  upon  them.  The  zeal  of  the  mystic  for 
self -purification,  his  moral  scrupulousness,  may  be  in 
part  derived  from  his  view  of  his  own  practical  duty  or 
his  desire  for  success.  But  this  is  all  something  dis- 
tinct from  the  love  of  God  in  its  psychological  meaning ; 
and  this  meaning  does  not  appear  until  the  active  stage 
of  worship,  which  is  "  prayer,"  gives  way  to  passivity  in 
the  discovery  of  an  object  of  effortless  appreciation. 
Unless  the  characteristic  of  pleasure,  that  is,  of  wholly 
spontaneous  and  original  conviction  of  worth,  enters 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  423 

into  worship,  the  prayer  has  no  answer  and  worship  is 
to  that  extent  a  failure. 

But  in  the  mystic  experience  that  is  what  happens. 
The  object  upon  which  the  worshipper  has  bent  his 
thought  becomes  actually  significant  of  the  whole.  The 
mystic  has  found  a  present  object  which  is  able  to 
gather  into  its  own  vortex  all  the  meanings  of  his 
worldly  work,  and  therewith  to  abolish  the  independent 
worth  of  that  work.  His  idea  of  the  world  in  its  unity 
has,  simply,  become  adequate  to  its  synthetic  task  ;  and 
the  disunited  segments  find  their  way  together :  this  is 
the  whole  secret  of  value.  It  would  be  just  to  say  that 
the  worshipper  is  at  first  moved  rather  by  the  desire  to 
love  God,  than  by  that  love  as  a  ruling  motive :  and 
that  the  actual  love  of  God  is  itself  the  success  of 
prayer,  simultaneous  with  the  insight  which  the  mystic 
obtains,  identical  with  it.1  The  character  of  this  expe- 
rience is  well  pictured  in  a  simple  note  in  the  diary  of 
Tolstoy,  whose  mystical  traits  (though  he  would  hardly 
be  called  a  mystic)  are  closely  allied  with  his  powers  of 
penetrating  self-description : 

"  Yesterday,"  he  writes,  "  I  hardly  slept  all  night.  Having 
posted  up  my  diary,  I  prayed  to  God.  It  is  impossible  to 
convey  the  sweetness  of  the  feeling  I  experienced  during  my 
prayer.  I  said  the  prayers  I  usually  repeat  by  heart,  '  Our 
Father/  4  To  the  Virgin,'  etc.,  and  still  remained  in  prayer. 
If  one  defines  prayer  as  a  petition  or  as  a  thanksgiving,  then 
I  did  not  pray.  I  desired  something  supremely  good ;  but 

1  "L'oraison  s'appelle  meditation  jusqu'a  ce  qu'elle  ait  produit  le 
miel  de  la  devotion:  apres  cela  elle  se  convertit  en  contemplation.  Le 
ddsir  d'obtenir  1'amour  divin  nous  fait  nie'diter;  mais  1'amour  obtenu  nous 
fait  contempler."  St.  Francois  de  Sales,  Traitd  de  Tamdur  de  Dieu,  VI, 
iii,  quoted  by  De  Montmorand,  Revue  philosophique,  vol.  57,  p.  252. 


424  WORSHIP  AND  THE   MYSTICS 

what,  I  cannot  express,  though  I  was  clearly  conscious  of  what 
I  wanted.  I  wished  to  merge  into  the  Universal  Being.  I 
asked  him  to  pardon  my  crimes ;  yet,  no,  I  did  not  ask  for 
that,  for  I  felt  that  if  he  had  given  me  this  blissful  moment, 
he  had  pardoned  me.  I  asked,  and  at  the  same  time  felt  that 
I  had  nothing  to  ask ;  and  that  I  cannot  and  do  not  know  how 
to  ask  :  I  thanked  him,  but  not  with  words  or  thought.  I  com- 
bined in  one  feeling  both  petition  and  gratitude.  Fear  quite 
vanished.  I  could  not  have  separated  any  one  emotion, — 
faith,  hope,  or  love,  —  from  the  general  feeling.  No,  this  was 
what  I  experienced  yesterday  :  it  was  love  of  God,  lofty  love, 
uniting  in  itself  all  that  is  good,  excluding  all  that  is  bad." l 

The  moving  principle  of  Tolstoy's  life  at  this  time 
was  doubtless  a  large  human  ambition,  taking  impulsive 
shape  as  a  desire  to  perfect  himself,  and  to  "  test  him- 
self ";  and  swinging  perhaps  only  in  this  solitary  in- 
stance within  the  circle  of  mystic  worship.  But  this 
human  ambition  and  this  divine  love  are  closely  related 
to  each  other.  We  may  say  that  beyond  the  limits  of 
the  mystic  experience  itself,  the  love  of  God  takes  on 
the  form  of  human  ambition ;  that  these  motives  are,  so 
to  speak,  allotropic  forms  of  the  same.  They  alternate 
with  each  other,  as  the  hour  glass  is  turned,  —  each 
one  in  turn  becoming  the  life  of  the  other.  With  the 
idea  of  God,  one  loves  the  world ;  and  then  with  the 
idea  of  the  world,  one  loves  God  again,  —  and  the  two 
loves,  or  ambitions,  are  of  one  substance,  though  they 
involve  alternations  in  the  history  of  the  empirical  will. 

VI 

For  worship  cannot  last ;  it  also  has  its  type  of  self- 
defeat  and  death.  The  worshipper  who  persists  in  his 

1  Life  of  Tolstoy,  Aylmer  Maude,  vol.  I,  pp.  63-64. 


THE   PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  425 

contemplation  of  the  whole,  thinking  to  establish  himself 
permanently  in  the  immediate  presence  of  God,  becomes 
an  automaton,  precisely  as  the  determined  worker 
becomes  a  machine. 

'  Automatism '  of  a  very  literal  character  is  not  only 
admitted  but  even  boasted  of  by  certain  mystics  who 
have  professed  to  enjoy  the  constant  vision  of  God. 
Madame  Guyon  reaches  a  stage  of  perfection  whose 
chief  marks  are  the  absence  of  personal  volition,  the 
replacement  of  effortful  voluntary  action  by  spontaneous 
obedience  to  the  suggestions  of  her  religious  sense,  or 
fancy.  She  accepts  the  logic  of  the  complete  with- 
drawal of  individual  will  and  choice,  namely,  that  all 
acts  become  indifferent:  there  is  a  will  in  the  world  and 
she  has  become  the  instrument  of  it,  but  with  perfect 
passivity,  without  sharing  in  it,  "  laissant  a  Dieu  le  soin 
de  faire  naitre  les  occasions  et  de  les  executer."  "  But 
why  do  you  do  this  rather  than  that?  I  do  not  know. 
I  give  myself  over  to  that  which  carries  me  on."1  From 
this  condition  of  mind  there  comes  the  "  apostolic  life," 
marked  by  an  extraordinary  facility  in  preaching  and 
writing,  capacity  to  do  a  prodigious  amount  of  work, 
and  to  undergo  great  distress  without  protest  from  her 
own  intelligence  and  will.  Her  life  during  this  time 
has  traits  of  largeness  ;  but  it  is  a  largeness  which  is 
evidently  consuming  itself  and  lessens  to  a  small  end  : 
it  exhibits  much  free  motion,  but  little  effect ;  it  produces 
much  writing,  elaborate  commentaries  on  scripture, 
"  Torrents  "  of  various  sorts  ;  but  how  much  of  perma- 
nent worth  ?  2  To  abandon  conscious  control  of  the 

1  Cf.  Delacroix,  Etudes,  etc.,  p.  155  ff. 

2  Mme.  Guyon's  (Euvres  completes  fill  forty  volumes.    In  it  all,  there 


426  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

trend  of  work,  to  resign  remembrance  of  what  has  been 
done  and  written,  to  live  continually  in  the  present 
moment  only  (in  so  far  as  these  things  actually  occur) 
—  here  inspiration,  real  enough  in  itself,  begins  to 
decline  into  irresponsibility.  The  sad  weakness  of  will 
and  of  voluntary  thought  which  comes  of  it  is  sufficient 
comment  on  its  general  failure  as  a  plan  of  life.  "  I 
find  in  myself  no  power  either  to  decide  or  to  execute; 
I  appear  to  myself  like  a  phantom."  l  We  have  no  need 
to  dwell  on  the  failure  of  unremitting  worship.  We 
in  our  day  have  well  perceived  and  overcome  that  dan- 
ger. We  need  only  note  the  fact. 

Thus  each  aspect  of  life  apart  from  its  alternate 
becomes  a  mechanism.  And  the  whole  of  human 
existence  falls  into  two  phases,  work  and  worship;  the 
domain  of  duty  and  the  domain  of  love,  respectively. 

We  have  now  outlined  the  relation  which  worship,  as 
I  believe,  does  normally  bear  to  life  at  large:  it  is  a 
necessary  alternative  to  all  our  effortful  willing  and 
knowing,  so  far  as  these  are  living  processes  of  empir- 
ical history.  The  principle  of  alternation  tends  to  justify 

is  some  genuine  inspiration.  Cowper  (in  a  letter  to  Unwin,  Aug.  3, 
1782)  says,  "  Mr.  Bull  .  .  has  put  into  my  bands  three  volumes  of  French 
poetry,  composed  by  Madame  Guion  —  a  quietist,  say  you,  and  a  fanatic, 
I  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  her —  'Tis  very  well,  .  .  but  in  the  mean 
time  her  verse  is  the  only  French  verse  I  ever  read  that  I  found  agreeable  ; 
there  is  a  neatness  in  it  equal  to  that  which  we  applaud,  with  so  much 
reason,  in  the  compositions  of  Prior.  I  have  translated  several  of  them, 
and  shall  proceed  in  my  translations,"  etc.  The  preface  to  "  Poe'sies  et 
cantiques  spirituels  "  describes  (doubtless  with  exaggeration)  this  verse 
as  having  been  written  "  sans  aucune  reflexion.  .  .  Ce  lui  e*tait  un  gene 
insupportable  de  faire  la  moindre  reflexion."  See  Delacroix,  p.  158. 

1  "  Je  ne  trouve  en  moi  nulle  puissance  de  vouloir  ni  d'  exe*cuter,  et  je  me 
trouve  comme  un  fantome."     Lettres  V,  p.  458  ;  Delacroix,  iStudes,  p.  214. 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  ALTERNATION  427 

the  ' negative  path'  of  the  mystic  by  placing  it  in  its 
organic  context.  Neither  phase  of  the  rhythm  is  jus- 
tified by  itself.  Duty  has  no  right  over  men  apart  from 
their  religious  experience.  On  the  other  hand,  religion 
has  no  right  apart  from  its  descent  into  the  world  of 
effort.  In  reality,  in  the  logical  and  eternal  order  of 
things,  these  two  phases  of  experience  belong  together, 
and  in  time  also  are  always  finding  their  way  together  : 
but  in  psychological  order,  in  the  natural  history  of  the 
mind,  they  fall  apart,  and  must  be  pursued  separately. 
Religion  belongs  with  morals — yet  the  deeds  of  religion 
must  alternate  with  the  moral  life  and  for  a  time  displace 
it.  Religion  belongs  with  all  the  works  of  art  and 
science  and  human  betterment — yet  it  has  its  own 
moment  which  takes  away  from  theirs. 

Any  given  moment  of  life  must  choose  between  two 
goods,  psychologically  incompatible.  On  the  one  hand, 
the  peace  of  the  hermit,  the  silence  of  the  forest,  the 
exaltation  of  sacrifice,  the  mightiness  of  simplification 
and  unity,  the  joy  of  self-abandonment,  the  calm  of" 
absolute  contemplation,  the  vision  of  God.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  variety  and  stress  of  life,  the  zest  of 
common  ends,  the  mastery  of  means,  the  glory  of  infinite 
enterprise,  the  pride  of  creativity  and  self-possession. 
The  modern  world  as  a  whole  has  made  its  choice.  But 
there  is  a  better  choice :  namely,  the  choice  of  both. 
For  the  life  of  each  is  that  it  may  lose  itself,  from  time 
to  time,  in  the  life  of  the  other.  And  this,  which  is 
obvious  in  things  partial,  is  true — and  even  chiefly 
true  —  in  things  total. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

PRAYER  AND  ITS  ANSWER 

IN  what  has  gone  before,  we  have  been  so  much  en- 
gaged with  the  psychological  bearings  and  analogies 
of  worship,  that  the  central  purpose  of  the  mystic's 
prayer  and  its  answer  have  been  obscured.  It  may  be 
well,  therefore,  to  state  now  in  simpler  fashion  our  view 
of  prayer,  and  of  the  attainment  which  prayer  reaches ; 
not  attempting  to  carry  theory  farther,  but  simply  to 
relieve  and  clarify  this  central  point. 

Let  us  first  consider  what  is  meant  by  the  answer  to 
prayer,  that  is,  the  mystic  experience  itself,  and  then 
the  nature  of  the  prayer  which  finds  such  answer. 

Mystic  insight  has  been  compared  by  William  James 
with  our  occasional  experiences  of  realizing,  more  or 
less  suddenly,  the  meaning  of  words,  sayings,  points  of 
view,  which  may  have  been  familiar  and  empty  posses- 
sions for  a  long  time.  Such  realizing  as  this,  we  may 
observe,  is  never  simply  the  discovery  of  the  meaning 
of  a  general  proposition.  It  is  a  flowing  together,  after 
some  artificial  separation,  of  universal  and  particular. 
I  wake  up  to  the  meaning  of  an  old  adage,  or  of  an 
opinion  to  which  I  have  been  hostile  on  prejudice,  when 
I  bring  such  a  generality  into  connection  with  a  con- 
crete occasion.  And  the  commoner  mystical  experiences 
begin,  I  believe,  with  the  concrete  occasion,  only  sug- 


PRAYER  AND   ITS  ANSWER  429 

gesting  or  foreshadowing  the  universal  meanings  which 
they  have. 

Experiences  of  this  sort  are  not  uncommon.  They 
are  but  moments  of  greater  mental  integrity  than  usual, 
in  which  consciousness  is  more  concrete,  the  associations 
and  resources  of  the  mind  more  instantly  collected  and 
fused  into  a  total  grasp  of  the  meaning  of  its  present 
object.  Such  a  moment  is  apt  to  be  disconnected  from 
other  moments  just  on  account  of  its  unusual  synthesis : 
it  is  disconnected  from  our  usual  condition  of  discon- 
nectedness. What  surprises  us  in  such  a  moment  is 
that  we  are  commonly  so  blind.  Hence  these  moments 
are  remembered,  and  become  authoritative  over  other 
moments,  as  occasions  when  we  have  seen  clearly,  whether 
or  not  we  can  any  longer  recover  that  same  clearness 
of  view.1 

Such  an  experience  for  instance,  sporadic  yet  fairly 
common,  is  a  sudden  realization  of  the  flux  of  time,  the 
mystery  of  the  past  that  is  gone  as  if  it  had  never  been, 
and  of  the  future  moment  that  is  sure  to  be,  yet  is  wholly 
non-existent.  So  seductive  is  the  occupation  of  the  mind 
with  generalities,  and  so  practically  useful  the  assump- 
tion that  everything  recurs,  that  the  individual  quality 
of  time-units  rarely  penetrates  to  us  —  we  act  as  if  one 
moment  could  always  be  substituted  for  another.  The 

1  Such  experiences  reach  all  degrees  of  clearness.  The  dominant 
idea  which  defines  a  passing  'mood*  —  and  most  certainly  every  mood 
has  its  idea,  or  vision  —  may  be  very  obscure.  Our  various  feelings,  our 
marked  experiences  of  pleasure  and  pain  —  though  they  never  fail  to 
become  authoritative  in  our  total  consciousness  of  what  the  world  means 
—  are,  singly  taken,  hard  to  read:  we  seldom  think  of  them  as  moments 
of  insight.  We  hardly  recognize  an  experience  as  typically  mystical  until 
the  idea  has  broken  through,  and  our  sense  of  its  significance  outweighs  our 
interest  in  its  present  quality. 


430  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

uniqueness  of  the  present  moment  has  to  be  discovered 
and  rediscovered ;  it  cannot  be  fairly  seen  without  some- 
thing like  a  religious  reverberation ;  the  poetry  of  many 
an  Omar  is  in  that  simple  fact.  It  is  perhaps  some  such 
sense  of  infinite  significance  in  mere  present  existence 
which  leads  Meister  Eckhart  to  say  that  "  He  who  stands 
continually  in  a  present  Now,  in  him  God  the  Father 
begets  his  Son  without  ceasing."  * 

Still  more  frequent  and  still  more  typically  mystical 
is  the  discovery  of  oneself  as  an  individual ;  as  when 
some  summons  drives  home  the  question,  Who  are  you? 
What  are  you  ?  The  assumption  of  an  artificial  selfhood, 
if  we  are  right,  is  not  an  accident  nor  a  pure  vice  —  it 
is  a  necessary  incident  of  duty.  The  idealist  as  well  as 
the  hypocrite  may  be  suddenly  confronted  with  a  new 
vision  of  himself  upon  a  rude  demand  to  be  "  natural/' 
or  serious,  or  sincere.  Such  demands  very  frequently 
find  only  another  self —  not  the  real  one  ;  may  substi- 
tute for  the  social  self  a  more  primitive  and  uncouth 
being,  equally  untrue,  the  self  of  my  bad  conscience  or 
of  my  self-distrust — still,  then,  a  theoretical  self,  though 
less  theoretical  than  the  made-self.  The  individual  self 
is  indeed  hard  to  find,  the  self  which  is,  deeper  than  all 
epithets.  To  come  upon  this  individual  is  an  event 
straightway  known  to  be  significant.2  Inge  quotes  the 
following  from  Tennyson's  memoirs : 

1  "  Meister  eghart  spricht:  wer  alle  cit  allein  ist,  der  ist  gottes  wir- 
dige;  vnt  wer  alliu  cit  do  heimenen  ist,  dem  ist  got  gegenwiirtig;  vnt  wer 
alliu  cit  stat  in  einem  gegenwiirtigen  nu,  in  dem  gebirt  got  der  uatter  sinen 
sune  an  vnderlas."     Wackernagel,  Altdeutsches  Lesebuch,  col.  679. 

2  What  this  revelation  of  self  may  signify  is  a  further  question  and 
doubtless  differs  at  different  times.     It  is  likely  to  be  an  egoistic  revelation; 
a  vision  of  the  infinite  risk  of  being  alive,  and  of  the  infinite  right  of  the 


PRAYER  AND  ITS  ANSWER  431 

44  A  kind  of  waking  trance  I  have  often  had,  quite  from  boy- 
hood, when  I  have  been  all  alone.  This  has  generally  come 
upon  me  through  repeating  my  own  name  two  or  three  times  to 
myself  silently,  till  all  at  once,  out  of  the  intensity  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  individuality,  the  individual  itself  seemed  to  dis- 
solve and  fade  away  into  boundless  being :  and  this  is  not  a 
confused  state,  but  the  clearest  of  the  clearest "  etc. 

But  the  best  known  of  all  experiences  of  the  mystic 
type  is  that  of  discovering  the  individuality  of  another 
person. 

We  deal  with  men  for  the  most  part  through  their 
qualities  and  properties,  that  is  to  say,  through  their 
universal,  describable,  recommendable  or  condemnable 
sides ;  each  man  stands  to  us,  or  tends  to  stand,  for  a 
certain  formula,  quality,  function,  in  semi-official  man- 
ner. We  have  our  theory  of  him;  he  plays  his  part  in 
our  artificial  world,  as  one  of  many.  We  note  in  him 
many  qualities,  good  and  bad,  interesting  and  perhaps 
contradictory;  we  wonder  how  all  these  characters  are 
united  in  one  being  who  feels  no  such  variety  in  him- 
self. The  one  quality  that  combines  these  many  in  a 
consistent  identity  we  can  neither  describe  nor  convey; 
nor  can  we  surely  hold  the  memory  of  it  except  by 
return  from  time  to  time  to  his  presence.  But  for 

solitary  self  to  be  satisfied.  It  always  includes  in  itself  that  more  abstract 
vision  above  described,  the  uniqueness  of  the  time-movement.  Subjective 
idealism,  and  such  practical  philosophy  as  that  of  Nietzsche  or  Max  Stir- 
ner,  are  unravelings  of  the  purport  of  just  such  mystical  experiences  :  and 
they  are  not  false  visions,  for  the  stake  of  existence  to  the  subject  cannot 
be  overstated,  though  it  may  well  be  disproportionately  stated.  The  will 
to  power  and  the  will  to  save  one's  soul  have  much  in  common:  and  one 
as  the  other  has  immeasurable  religious  importance.  In  all  such  experi- 
ences, and  the  self-recovery  that  goes  with  them,  it  is  the  vision  of  the 
individual  which  marks  the  moment  of  mystic  illumination. 


432  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

the  most  part  we  are  not  concerned  with  this;  the  man 
is  a  function,  and  would  be  improved  by  the  excision  of 
his  bad  qualities;  we  could  easily  re-make  him  to  his 
advantage,  after  the  pattern  of  our  own  universal 
standards.  Our  critical  judgment  of  him  is,  we  have 
said,  pluralistic  and  general :  there  is  a  miracle  in  him 
—  that  is,  his  individuality  —  but  we  remain  outside  the 
mystery,  and  willingly.  For  it  is  the  business  of  men 
to  fit  well  together  in  the  work  of  the  world,  to  be 
officers  there,  reliable  working-universals. 

But  at  times  we  are  granted  something  like  a  mystic 
vision :  it  seems  to  us  that  we  have  come  into  the  pres- 
ence of  the  individual  and  have  seen  the  miracle  as  such. 
We  have  found  the  other  soul  in  its  seclusion  and  sim- 
plicity —  so  we  think ;  and  we  begin  to  appreciate  the 
place  even  of  its  apparent  defects  in  that  synthesis  which 
is  itself.  The  critical  attitude  is  no  longer  able  to  hold 
its  negation  against  this  interest  in  the  person  as  sub- 
stance—  as  something  that  is,  and  is  one.  The  vision 
in  fact  begins  to  work  upon  us;  we  cannot  forget  it: 
we  no  longer  attend  to  it  with  voluntary  effort,  but  it 
forms  a  part  of  our  consciousness  and  begins  to  make 
us  over  after  its  own  pattern,  as  if  it  were  active  and 
we  were  plastic  before  it.  This  perception  of  the  other 
as  an  individual  being  is  love,  in  its  special  meaning. 
Love  does  not  displace  criticism  :  it  contains  it.1  Love 
accepts  the  individual  with  his  defects,  because  the  One 

1  I  perceive  faults  in  my  social  acquaintances,  but  I  do  not  make  a 
practice  of  telling  them  their  faults,  because  my  relations  with  them  are 
still  subject  to  the  abstract  assumptions  of  our  artificial  selfhoods.  But 
whatever  fault  I  discover  in  one  whom  I  love  I  make  known  to  him  :  for 
thereby  1  address  the  self  which  I  have  discovered,  simpler  and  greater 
than  the  self  of  that  fault,  and  which  can  join  me  in  being  hostile  to  it. 


PRAYER  AND  ITS   ANSWER  433 

which  it  has  seen  contains  the  inward  remedy  for  those 
defects.  Nor  does  love  feel  the  need  of  concealing  its 
own  faults,  for  love  of  another  involves  also  a  discov- 
ery of  the  individual  in  oneself:1  it  is  a  presence  of  the 
individual  to  the  individual,  a  "flight  of  the  alone  to, 
the  alone." 

Love  is  a  revelation  like  that  of  the  mystic,  full  of 
significance.  For  in  finding  the  individual,  one  has 
indeed  found  the  individual's  idea.  That  which  explains 
and  unites  and  largely  justifies  all  these  various  and 
seeming-inconsistent  qualities  is  some  view  of  the  world 
which  he  has,  some  hold  on  the  absolute,  some  whole- 
idea.  He  is  an  individual  vision  of  reality;  and  in 
knowing  him,  I  do  at  the  same  time  know  his  vision 
and  make  his  vision  my  own.  This  is  the  central  fact 
of  all  mysticism :  namely,  that  the  discovery  of  the  indi- 
vidual is  always  a  discovery  of  truth,  of  a  powerfully 
synthetic  idea,  and  yet  not  by  the  way  of  effortful 
thinking.  That  interest  in  another  soul  which  we  call 
love  is  not  an  interest  in  his  idea  as  a  matter  of  theory : 
it  is  an  interest  in  him  as  an  individual  substance,  a 
being  which  knows  and  is  more  than  its  knowledge. 

All  these  common  experiences,  we  say,  are  analogous 
to  the  mystic  insight.  And  there  can  now  be  little 
doubt  about  the  nature  of  that  insight  itself  and  its 
place  among  the  rest.  For  what  is  the  mystic  experi- 
ence but  finding  the  idea  of  the  whole,  as  love  finds 
the  idea  of  a  person?  Worship  seeks  the  self  of  the 
world  as  an  individual  being;  but  in  finding  this  self,  it 

1  Love  thus  includes  in  itself  all  of  those  lesser  or  relatively  abstract 
experiences  which  we  have  been  describing. 


434  WORSHIP  AND   THE   MYSTICS 

gains,  or  regains,  a  tolerating  conception  of  this  world, 
a  view  which  can  make  life  as  a  whole  once  more  accept- 
able, inviting,  great.  In  this  idea  it  is  able  not  to  sink 
but  to  suspend  its  criticisms  of  existence  :  it  is  not  recon- 
ciled to  defects,  but  it  sees  something  more  than  dead 
fact,  even  some  meaning,  in  their  presence.  The  total 
sound  of  life  sends  up  to  it  some  echo  of  beauty ;  and  it 
is  able,  without  blindness,  to  become  as  it  were  a  lover 
of  the  whole.  For  the  idea  which  thus  of  itself  absorbs 
our  hostilities,  binding  our  many  and  divergent  judg- 
ments in  powerful  synthesis,  is  won  not  by  the  effort 
of  the  theoretic  will,  but  by  coming  effortlessly  upon 
the  spirit  of  the  world,  as  an  individual  being,  simple, 
wonderful,  and  in  close  union  with  the  individual  in 
oneself. 

These  other  experiences  are  not  only  analogous  to  the 
mystic  insight :  they  are,  as  we  have  said,  parts  of  it. 
All  loss  of  value  in  the  world  is  at  the  same  time  a  loss 
of  religious  insight.  All  the  artificialities  of  effortful 
attention  strike  first  at  the  virility  of  the  whole-idea, 
and  dim  the  consciousness  of  God.  All  absolute  criti- 
cism condemns  the  whole;  all  pluralism  mutilates  first 
the  unity  of  existence;  all  romanticism  adds  to  the  bur- 
den of  heaven.  And  wherever  in  all  life  the  individual 
vanishes  from  my  grasp,  there  has  vanished  first  the 
individual  God.  Where  men  and  self  become  abstrac- 
tions, there  God  also  becomes  an  abstract  universal, 
occupying  an  official  position  in  my  artificial  world, 
reduced  to  be  dealt  with  in  polite  and  deadly  distance. 
On  the  other  hand,  wherever  the  individual  is  recovered, 
there  is  in  some  degree  also  a  vision  of  God.  God  is 
the  One  of  all  these  plural  loves  and  pleasures;  and  it 


PRAYER  AND  ITS   ANSWER  436 

is  the  love  of  God  which  naturally  includes  and  places 
all  the  rest. 

But  of  all  these  objects,  God  is  the  only  one  always 
accessible  to  direct  pursuit ;  the  only  one  admitting  such 
a  conscious,  voluntary  cult  as  worship  is.  Our  pleasures 
are  so  many  discoveries;  friendships,  appreciations, 
loves  generally,  happen  to  men  as  by  good  chance :  once 
they  have  dawned  upon  us,  we  may  pursue  them  as 
vigorously  as  we  will,  but  the  appreciations  themselves 
cannot  be  directly  sought.  It  is  only  such  vision  of 
God  as  one  at  any  time  has  that  enables  him  to  recog- 
nize the  pleasant,  the  beautiful,  in  things  and  persons : 
the  only  net  that  can  be  spread  for  the  loving  of  men 
and  things  is  the  consciousness  of  the  absolute.1  So 
far  as  these  other  objects  retain  their  value,  that  is  to 
say,  their  idea,  we  may  turn  to  them ;  but  their  salt  has 
a  tendency  to  lose  its  savor,  and  cannot  be  salted  again 
by  its  own  kind.  This  is  the  root  of  our  trouble.  We 
know  always  that  life  is  worth  living;  we  know,  too, 
that  we  have  in  us  somewhere  the  power  of  appreciat- 
ing it;  we  know  that  nothing  is  common  or  unclean, 
and  nothing  hopeless:  only — we  cannot  see  it  so.  We 
have  lost  our  primitive  joy  in  primitive  things ;  we  have 
lost  our  freshness  of  impression.  It  is  no  longer  true 
that  "the  scent  of  a  flower,  the  flight  of  sea-gulls 
round  a  cliff,  the  cornfield  in  the  sun,  stir  us  to  strange 
and  cosmic  delights."  And  it  is  worse  than  useless,  so 
we  find,  to  try  with  might  and  main  to  feel  in  these 

1  As  a  command,  the  injunction  to  love  one's  neighbor  would  be 
meaningless  unless  the  command  to  love  God  went  before  it.  In  the 
case  of  all  other  affections,  I  love  what  I  must ;  in  the  case  of  this  one  I 
love  as  I  will,  hence  it  is  subject  to  command. 


436  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

things  what  we  have  once  felt.  Nothing  is  more  com- 
mon than  this  trying,  and  nothing  more  fatal.  Yet  the 
thing  is  there.  There  are  great  funds  of  enthusiasm 
and  literal  love  of  men  and  things  in  us,  if  we  could 
but  reach  them.  There  is  a  love  of  life  in  us  which  we 
never  let  go.  But  that  love  of  life,  if  we  can  discern 
its  true  nature,  is  at  bottom  a  love  of  God :  it  is  that 
mystic  thread  which  "  in  the  ground  of  the  soul "  is 
never  broken.  If  we  can  regain  that,  all  the  rest  will 
follow.  And  only  by  regaining  that  can  we  surely 
recover  the  rest.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  we  must  add 
to  all  the  other  means  for  keeping  or  recovering  our 
spiritual  integrity,  prayer.  And  what,  in  this  present 
day  of  grace,  does  prayer  mean? 

It  means,  in  the  first  place,  that  we  maintain  our  dis- 
content, returning  again  and  again  to  the  demand  that 
our  existence  shall  find  itself  justified  in  our  own  eyes. 
The  first  practical  principle  of  religion  is  to  hold  with- 
out weakening  the  right  of  every  individual  life  to  know 
its  own  worth.  We  must  not  let  reality  go,  this  reality 
which  has  produced  us,  until  it  satisfies  us :  it  must 
yield  us  the  idea  which  unites  what  we  most  deeply 
desire  with  what  is.  This  is  the  prayer  of  Jacob  ;  and 
in  a  fundamental  sense  it  is  the  first  prayer  of  every 
human  being.  We  are  right  in  wishing  to  see  first  and 
be  loyal  afterward. 

It  means,  in  the  second  place,  that  we  understand 
clearly  to  what  self  this  right  belongs,  and  cultivate 
that  self.  This  right  to  see  does  not  belong  to  our  com- 
plex and  strident  personality  which  goes  about,  think- 
ing by  omnipotent  effort  to  earn  its  happiness  and  its 


PRAYER  AND  ITS  ANSWER  437 

certainty.  It  belongs  only  to  that  in  us  which  is  simple 
and  sincere.  The  sincere  is  that  which  is  moved  by 
necessity  not  by  effort  (no  feeling  is  sincere  which  is 
made  by  will):  the  genuine  will  is  the  will  which  goes 
forth  from  effortless  attention,  that  is  to  say,  from  love 
—  and  that  is  to  say,  from  sight.  We  have  the  right 
to  see  first  and  be  loyal  afterward  only  because  unless 
we  see  we  cannot  be  loyal,  nor  in  any  sense  sincere 
or  moral.  No  determination  to  be  a  lover  of  life,  no 
resolve  to  fight  down  desire  or  grief  or  regret  or  aver- 
sion, no  attempt  to  transform  one's  own  nature,  can  suc- 
ceed by  dint  of  the  effortful  will  alone.  But  sight  does 
its  own  transforming  :  sight  turns  the  energy  of  our 
own  desires  into  the  work  of  their  own  re-making.  It 
is  thus  an  effortless  self,  and  therewith  a  necessary  will, 
that  we  have  to  seek.  And  for  the  same  reason,  it 
is  a  simple  self,  not  involved  in  our  artificial  distinc- 
tions.1 

To  be  able  to  command  this  simple  and  sincere  self 
is  the  critical  condition  of  religious  insight.  Hence 
(thirdly)  we  in  this  day  must  still  follow,  in  some  fash- 
ion significant  for  ourselves,  the  negative  path  of  all 
the  mystics.  We  require  the  sight  which  cannot  come 
through  trying  to  see ;  we  must  try,  then,  to  put  our- 
selves consciously  where  sight  must  follow.  We  must 

1  This  world  is  so  made,  not  only  that  a  simple  view  of  the  whole  is 
possible,  but  that  our  mastery  of  the  world  may  proceed,  and  must  pro- 
ceed, from  this  simple  view  outward.  The  idealist  philosopher  has  been; 
inclined  to  conceive  the  subject  as  ruler  of  the  object  :  in  this  case,  to 
'  return  into  oneself '  is  to  return  to  the  seat  of  ultimate  power,  and  to  find 
the  law-giving  principle  of  things,  that  which  is  a  priori  in  both  thought 
and  practice.  But  it  is  rather  the  simple  than  the  subjective  that  we 
must  learn  to  appeal  to,  the  simple  which  is  both  subjective  and  objec- 
tive, and  whose  a  priori,  or  '  anticipated  attainment '  is  concrete. 


438  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

deliberately  review  and  reject,  from  time  to  time,  what- 
ever is  falsely  artificial  and  self-assertive  in  our  out- 
going purposes;  we  must  track,  as  far  as  we  can,  the 
points  of  our  own  partiality.  We  must,  even  in  this 
modern  world  of  ours,  know  how  to  shake  off  the  pre- 
possessions of  our  theoretic  wills ;  to  regard  all  ambi- 
tions and  duties  for  the  time  as  non-existent;  to  reduce 
all  reality  to  the  primitive  terms  of  self,  universe,  and 
the  present  moment  (wherein  everything  begins  from  the 
beginning).  In  this  stark,  original  selfhood,  detached 
from  action  and  from  the  warping  of  the  interests  of 
action,  we  view  all  that  active  career  as  in  a  drama,  as 
the  life  of  another,  in  the  light  of  what  we  can  then 
and  there  muster  of  the  whole.  Its  loves  and  hates  rise 
up  before  us  in  a  more  universal  frame.  We  must 
recall  especially  whatever  is  still  to  us  of  effortless 
value,  whatever  we  do  still  sincerely  enjoy  and  love,  and 
we  must  pray  for  the  vision  of  the  whole  of  which  these 
various  goods  are  fragments,  and  upon  which  they  depend 
as  their  absolute.  I  use  the  word  'pray/  because,  in 
the  end,  there  is  no  other  word  which  conveys  that  atti- 
tude of  will  in  which  effort  is  so  combined  with  non- 
effort,  and  self-assertion  with  consciousness  of  absolute 
dependence.  Nor  do  I  know  why  this  word  should  be 
translated  into  anything  more  scholastic.  The  insight 
we  require  is  both  a  right  and  a  gift,  the  justest  gift 
in  all  experience ;  we  dare  not  be  too  proud  to  comply 
with  its  evident  conditions.  We  must  know  that  in 
doing  these  things,  we  are  already  using  a  degree  of 
mystic  insight :  we  are  relying  upon  an  attachment  to 
the  whole  which  is  too  deep  in  us  to  be  lost  or  over- 
come ;  we  are  striving  to  ( enter  into  ourselves/  to 


PRAYER  AND  ITS  ANSWER  439 

recognize  this  attachment  for  what  it  is,  the  love  of 
the  God  of  that  alienated  world.     This  is  prayer. 

And  the  answer  to  prayer  is  whatever  of  simplicity, 
of  naturalness,  of  original  appreciation,  is  brought  into 
our  view  of  things  by  this  act  of  obedience  of  the  mind 
to  its  absolute  object.  In  proportion  as  our  prayer  is 
honest,  we  shall  find  ourselves  less  thinking,  and  more 
seeing ;  and  we  can  turn  again  to  meet  experience  with 
so  much  better  poise  and  understanding.  How  full, 
how  instantaneous,  how  overwhelming  may  be  the 
vision  of  the  deity  of  the  world  and  the  worth  of  one's 
own  part  in  it,  no  one  can  say :  certainly  it  is  beyond 
the  province  of  philosophy  to  prescribe.  Neither  can  it 
be  told  when  or  through  what  apparent  accidents  the 
deeper  insights  of  our  experience  may  occur.  Philos- 
ophy can  only  point  out  the  fundamental  law  of  reli- 
gious life,  the  right  to  see  first  and  be  loyal  afterward  ; 
and  interpret  in  its  own  abstract  language  the  condi- 
tions of  that  vision. 

But  the  meaning  of  the  mystic  experience  is  pro- 
phetic. It  anticipates  an  attainment  still  to  be  won ;  it 
can  be  held  only  by  proceeding  to  that  winning.  Wor- 
ship is  false  unless  it  is  sanctioned  in  turn  by  the  life 
that  follows  it.  This  sanction  is  twofold.  First  that  it 
does  not  undermine,  but  rather  supports,  the  world  of 
other  aims.  The  mystic  must  return  not  less  a  lover  of 
men,  but  rather  a  lover  in  more  intense  and  human 
fashion,  because  it  is  only  the  true  worshipper  who  can 
find  the  world  genuinely  lovable.  The  vision  of  God 
must  give  the  reason  for  all  the  irrational  attachments 
of  life,  all  the  sacrifices  of  self  to  brother,  state,  or 


440  WORSHIP  AND  THE  MYSTICS 

cause.  It  furnishes  the  answer  to  the  last  Why  of 
duty.  To  be  6  loyal  afterward '  is  the  first  sanction  of 
true  worship  :  and  also  the  condition  of  further  insight. 
It  is  by  the  alternation  of  loyalty  and  worship  that 
each  life  must  hold  and  increase  its  individual  level 
of  value. 

The  second  sanction  of  worship  is,  that  the  worship- 
per does  not  merely  sustain,  but  creates.  All  beauty, 
as  Plato  thought,  incites  to  reproduction.  It  incites 
perhaps  to  something  more  than  reproduction  —  to 
origination.  Some  superabundance  there  is  in  the 
vision  of  God  which  sends  the  seer  back  not  to  the 
old  but  to  the  new ;  not  with  a  release  from  old  griev- 
ances, but  with  something  like  a  hunger  for  pain  and 
difficulty.  The  edge  of  the  tool  of  will  is  restored, 
and  it  is  eager  for  world-making.  The  man  is  able  to 
fight,  to  oppose  and  suffer ;  he  is  endowed  with  grit, 
with  faith.  This  is  the  moral  result  of  true  worship. 

And  this,  I  believe,  is  the  whole  inward  response  to 
prayer.  The  mystic  has  reverted  to  the  One,  and  now 
returns  to  the  many,  more  real  than  before,  more  po- 
tent. That  which  can  happen  only  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  God  is  an  act  of  God:  and  I  cannot  doubt  that 
it  has  been  with  the  mystic  even  as  he  says  —  namely, 
that  God  has  given  to  him  something  of  Himself.  By 
just  so  much  as  the  ultimate  meaning  of  things  becomes 
present  to  him,  by  just  so  much  is  he  capable  of  bring- 
ing new  values  back  to  earth ;  not  in  explicit  form  at 
first,  but  as  an  enhanced  quantity  of  being  in  himself, 
as  a  renewed  grasp  of  the  quality  of  the  goal.  In  this 
way  is  the  mystic  freighted  with  the  future ;  and  the 
fruit  he  may  gather  in  his  own  person,  or  may  spread 


PRAYER  AND  ITS   ANSWER  441 

abroad  in  the  world  merely  in  the  form  of  his  own 
quickened  hold  on  life  and  love  of  it,  in  the  form  of 
the  "  Holy  Spirit,' '  to  be  applied  and  gathered  by  others. 
But  the  whole  meaning  of  the  answer  to  prayer,  and 
so  of  prayer  itself,  cannot  appear  until  we  have  reviewed 
those  fruits  of  which  the  mystic  experience  contains 
the  prophecy. 


PART  VI 
THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 


PART  VI 

PRELIMINARY 

IN  times  gone  by,  the  more  remarkable  experiences  of 
the  mystics  were  unhesitatingly  read  as  direct  com- 
munications of  God  to  the  human  mind.  The  content  f 
of  some  of  these  experiences  has  been  deposited  (to- 
gether with  much  else)  in  the  various  sacred  writings 
of  the  world,  as  revelation.  Other  such  experiences 
seemed  to  signify  commands,  and  found  expression 
chiefly  in  action :  their  record  is  to  be  found  in  history, 
as  the  inspired  works  and  prophetic  deeds  of  men.  In 
religion  as  we  know  it  to-day,  we  hear  little  of  either 
revelation  or  prophecy :  answer  to  prayer,  such  as  it  is, 
seems  to  have  taken  on  a  more  private  interest.  Yet  I 
have  no  doubt  that  in  some  form  or  other  these  are 
still  the  fruits  of  religion  :  so  far  as  religious  experience 
has  become  intelligible  to  us,  it  has  been  as  a  develop- 
ment both  in  idea  and  in  will.  And  further,  I  have  no 
doubt  that  these  results  are  acts  of  God :  for  that  is  an 
act  of  God  which  cannot  happen  without  turning  the 
mind  to  God.  I  shall  therefore  discuss  the  fruits  of 
religion  under  these  heads :  revelation,  inspiration  (re- 
ligious creativity),  and  the  prophetic  consciousness. 

These  are  the  results  of  religion  as  they  appear  first 
in  the  life  of  the  individual,  and  through  the  individual 
contribute  to  the  wealth  of  mankind.  It  is. through  the 
individual  that  religion  achieves  those  results  in  history 


446  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

which  first  drew  our  attention  (chapter  ii),  and  whose 
theory  we  are  now  ready  to  develop.  But  there  are 
further  fruits  of  religion,  more  distinctively  historical 
in  character;  results  which  appear  in  the  structure  of 
the  social  environment  wherein  the  religious  conscious- 
ness must  live  and  breathe.  It  remains  for  the  con- 
cluding chapter  to  outline  these  over-individual  fruits 
of  religion,  and  their  effects  in  the  general  movement 
of  history.  Thus  we  touch  upon  the  edge  of  another 
aspect  of  the  work  of  God  in  the  world,  suggested  in 
part  by  the  term  providence,  and  in  part  by  the  term 
salvation  in  so  far  as  this  saving  must  come  to  the  in- 
dividual from  the  outside,  through  the  medium  of  his 
spiritual  environment.  Here  we  shall  find  a  necessary 
supplement  to  the  inner  answer  to  prayer ;  and  also  a 
view  of  the  function  of  those  historic  mediators  which 
the  universal  spirit  of  religion  forever  inclines  to  trans- 
cend, and  forever  returns  to  by  an  inward  necessity 
hard  to  understand. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

PECULIAR   KNOWLEDGE   AND    CERTAINTY: 
REVELATION   AND   DOGMA 

IN  speaking  of  revelation  we  have  in  mind  that 
knowledge  which  is  the  especial  product  or  by-product 
of  religion ;  we  have  to  ask  what  it  is  that  the  mystic 
knows,  which  cannot  otherwise  be  known.  We  have 
in  mind  also  those  sacred  books.  They  form  a  peculiar 
body  of  literature  :  unorganized,  obscure,  repetitious, 
unscientific,  powerful,  immortal.  In  this  present  chapter 
we  shall  have  in  view  both  this  ancient  literature  and 
contemporary  religious  experience;  and  shall  undertake 
to  interpret  the  one  by  the  other. 

The  mystic  both  in  his  preparation  and  in  the  expe- 
rience that  supplements  that  preparation,  is  a  world- 
destroyer  as  we  have  seen:  and  his  return  must  be  a 
re-creation  of  a  world.  The  mystic  is  always  original 
in  the  sense  that  he  feels  obliged  to  make  his  world 
consciously  his  own,  to  build  up  everything  for  him- 
self from  the  beginning.  But  this  may  not  mean  that 
he  has  any  novelty  to  offer  others ;  on  the  contrary, 
being  much  occupied  with  first  principles  of  world-build- 
ing he  may  never  come  so  far  as  the  world  otherwise 
has  come.  Tolstoy  well  shows  this  quality  of  the  mys- 
tic as  knower :  the  imperious  necessity  of  rejecting  all 
previous  accomplishment  of  men  ;  of  reducing  the  world 


448  THE  FRUITS   OF  RELIGION 

to  anarchy,  and  building  all  up  again  from  chaos.  His 
life  is  spent  among  the  rudiments,  not  without  great 
result,  but  without  ever  perceiving  the  worth  of  his  own 
temporal  present :  a  huge,  fertile,  world-moving  anach- 
ronism. Such  in  general  is  the  case  of  genius,  control- 
ling the  future  not  by  any  complete  grasp  of  its  own 
age,  but  by  a  recovered  hold  upon  the  ancient  and  eter- 
nal. And  such,  in  general,  is  also  the  case  of  the  mystic ; 
whose  chief  concern  is  not  to  find  things  new  to  men  at 
large,  but  only  to  find  the  Ancient  of  Days  as  a  God 
revealed  personally  to  him.  The  mystic  is,  in  the  first 
place,  an  original  knower  of  old  truth. 

What  the  mystic  knows  is,  first  of  all,  that  which  he 
intends  to  know,  namely  God  :  and  in  so  far  as  he  is  a 
mystic  pure  and  simple  he  knows  nothing  else  than 
God.  There  is  nothing  new  about  this  knowledge 
except  its  relation  to  him :  what  he  knows  he  knows 
certainly,  in  his  own  person,  and  for  himself. 

Nevertheless,  he  seems  to  regard  his  old  truth  as  of 
general  interest :  he  treats  it  as  if  it  were  a  veritable 
mystery,  and  as  something  which  could  not  otherwise 
be  known  to  men  than  through  his  announcing  it.  He 
is  not  in  any  way  abashed  by  the  multitude  of  his  pred- 
ecessors who  have  been  publishing  the  same  thing. 
The  typical  mystic  seems  to  be  innocent  of  all  historical 
comparison  in  this  respect :  history  always  begins  with 
him,  and  flows  outward  in  all  directions.  He  speaks 
his  mind  as  if  he  were  the  first  to  speak,  and  as  if  all 
depended  upon  his  speaking.1  It  is  because  of  this 

1  There  is,  of  course,  a  psychological  necessity  here  at  work.  No  man 
can  keep  a  truth  as  his  own  without  trying  to  impose  it  upon  others.  If 
it  is  a  truth,  this  revelation,  it  is  a  knowledge  of  mankind's  god,  not  of 


CERTAINTY  AND  DOGMA  449 

circumstance  that  the  systematic  truth-seeker,  who 
measures  revelation  by  stages,  finds  the  literature  of 
mysticism  and  of  all  religion  curiously  repetitious  and 

any  private  god  of  the  worshipper  ;  and  it  must  show  itself  true  in  their 
confirmation  of  it.  A  certainty  which  cannot  be  recovered  in  the  certainty 
of  other  moments  and  of  other  men  is  a  defeated  and  dying  certainty. 
For  his  own  sake,  if  for  no  other,  the  mystic  has  been  driven  to  become  a 
propagandist  of  his  old  discoveries. 

This  necessity  of  corroboration  casts  doubt  upon  the  absolute  cer- 
tainty of  the  revelation  itself.  The  mystic  experience  seems  to  carry 
with  it  a  great  surge  of  certainty  :  the  mystic  knows  that  "  This  is  God  "; 
there  is  a  sense  of  arrival,  of  having  touched  goal,  that  seems  to  banish 
all  possibility  of  doubt.  This  moment  becomes  the  standard  of  all  cer- 
tainty ;  it  is  an  "  illumination."  Yet,  the  mystic  himself  frequently  falls 
into  doubt,  in  later  moments,  about  the  authenticity  of  his  experience  ; 
it  may  have  been  due  to  the  devil,  or  to  imagination.  If  he  thus  belies 
his  own  original  assertion  of  immediate  certainty,  what  credit  can  it  have 
on  strictly  non-partisan  grounds  ? 

The  mystic  needs  to  judge  the  truth  of  his  experience  by  its  bearing 
on  other  experience.  If  it  accords  with  life  generally,  he  will  in  the  long 
run  regard  it  true  ;  if  it  cannot  be  made  to  harmonize  with  experience 
otherwise  and  with  thought,  he  must  abandon  it.  Hence  there  can  be  no 
immediate  certainty,  we  are  sometimes  told  ;  assurance  is  conferred  on  the 
mystical  experience  by  its  external  relations,  by  the  entire  system  of  liv- 
ing truth  into  which  it  falls.  The  truth  of  the  world  is  necessary  to  give 
certainty  to  the  truth  of  God.  "  It  is  the  possibility  of  comprehending 
these  experiences,"  says  Delacroix,  "  of  living  them,  of  utilizing  them  in 
action,  which  here  serves  as  a  touchstone  of  their  truth.  Intuition  is  of 
no  value  save  in  an  ensemble  with  which  it  accords."  £tudes  de  psycho- 
logic, etc.,  p.  380. 

I  agree  with  Delacroix  that  without  a  system  of  experience  there 
would  be  no  certainty  of  anything  ;  and  that  harmony  with  world-knowl- 
edge is  needed  to  establish  the  certainty  of  God.  But  since  we  have 
judged  that  the  certainty  of  this  world  is  derived  from  the  certainty  of 
God  in  the  first  place,  the  world  can  hardly  withhold  its  consent.  The 
world  is  not  otherwise  known  than  as  the  world  of  this  God  ;  God  is  not 
otherwise  known  than  as  the  God  of  this  world  :  the  two  knowledges  are 
of  one  piece  —  the  mystic  cannot  be  mistaken.  The  intention  of  worship, 
which  gives  the  whole  experience  its  identity,  has  its  continuous  object, 
the  known  God  present  in  all  experience  :  this  is  the  abs'olute  constant  in 
the  process,  and  hence  not  subject  to  doubt.  Thus  it  is  possible  to  be 


450  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

empty,  defying  serial  arrangement,  recurring  again  and 
again  to  the  same  point.  But  there  are  reasons  for 
this  peculiarity  and  we  shall  do  well  to  look  into  them : 
emptiness  and  antiquity  have  their  own  way  of  becom- 
ing fertile. 

In  the  first  place  his  repetitions  are  justified  by  the 
character  of  the  truth  which  he  has  to  announce.  For 
his  truth  is  a  truth  which  has  to  be  verified  individually 
by  every  new  human  being.  The  ancient  truth  of  the 
mystic  is  nothing  else  than  the  truth  about  originality, 
about  what  it  is  to  own  one's  own  soul.  The  knowl- 
edge of  God  as  the  worshipper  has  it  is  the  opposite 
of  everything  that  can  ever  become  merely  traditional 
in  religion.  No  matter  how  true  an  idea  of  God  reli- 
gion may  hand  on,  the  true  idea  may  constitute  a  wall 
which  keeps  God  out,  if  it  is  adopted  as  an  idea  simply, 
—  that  is  to  say,  as  a  repetition  of  other  men's  insights, 

certain  at  the  moment,  without  waiting  for  later  corroboration  or  later 
doubt.  I  know  of  no  certainty  which  is  not  certainty  at  some  moment 
or  series  of  moments  ;  certainty  also  must  have  its  temporal  existence. 
We  must  remember  that  in  these  experiences,  to  which  we  give  the  name 
of  mystic  simply  because  in  them  the  individual  finds  himself  consciously 
at  one  with  the  whole  of  things,  the  world  is  not  absent  :  it  is  with  one's 
world-knowledge  that  one  now  knows  his  world-unity,  or  God.  The 
system  of  ideas  is  in  no  sense  abandoned,  but  rather  in  the  liveliest  use, 
though  not  thought  of.  Hence  it  is  that  the  mystic  may  be  certain  in 
his  moment,  immediately. 

But  to  keep  this  certainty  in  all  later  moments  is  a  problem  for  those 
later  moments.  Systematic  agreement  and  alternation  are  necessary  to 
hold  what  has  in  a  moment  been  gained.  The  meaning  of  that  experi- 
ence is  the  meaning  which  it  can  keep  throughout  all  such  oscillations  of 
thought ;  it  is  the  invariant  which  survives  and  becomes  defined  through 
the  long  course  of  trial  and  error  which  all  this  system-making  and  com- 
parison involves.  Both  statements  are  true  —  one  may  be  wholly  certain 
of  the  presence  of  God  ;  and  yet  one  must  keep  this  certainty,  novel  or 
not,  by  communicating  it. 


CERTAINTY  AND  DOGMA  451 

as  a  universal  idea.  God,  who  is  truly  said  to  explain 
man  to  himself,  must  explain  me  to  myself.  What  I 
require  to  find  in  a  god  is  that  "  This  is  what  I  have 
wanted ;  this  is  what  I  have  been  meaning  all  the  time ; 
the  world  as  I  now  see  it  is  a  world  in  which  I  as  a 
primitive,  various,  infinitely  discontented  will  can  com- 
pletely live  and  breathe."  This  is  what  the  mystic  is 
trying  to  make  plain  —  that  the  idea,  as  a  universal, 
is  not  sufficient  for  any  man  to  live  by. 

Hence  the  chief  burden  of  his  revelation  (as  if  of 
the  idea's  own  never-resting  conscience)  is  that  religion 
must  exist  as  experience  and  not  as  idea  only.  There 
is  nothing  in  sensation  which  physical  science  cannot 
exhaust,  except  the  experience  of  having  sensations:  in 
the  same  way,  there  is  nothing  in  the  mystic  experience 
not  expressible  in  idea,  except  the  experiencing  itself. 
This  is  the  chief  part  of  the  mystic  knowledge  which 
cannot  be  otherwise  known,  namely  that  the  mystic 
experience  is  possible.  Monotonously  and  age  after 
age,  men  rediscover  and  reannounce  this  invariant  truth, 
as  if  they  were  calling  on  men  to  exist,  to  live,  to  save 
their  souls.  And  what  is  it  to  save  one's  soul,  if  not  to 
be  original  in  this  sense  (and  in  what  follows  from  it)  ? 
From  this  point  of  view  the  reiteration  of  the  mystic  is 
justified. 

But  there  is  a  further  reason  for  the  mystic's  persist- 
ent celebration  of  time-worn  axioms.  Repetition,  which 
is  abomination  to  science,  is  not  necessarily  an  abomi- 
nation to  the  sense  of  beauty,  nor  to  the  sense  of  grati- 
tude, certainly  not  to  the  lover,  and  for  similar  reason 
not  to  the  worshipper.  Individual  interest  can  never 


452  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

recur  often  enough  to  its  old  theme ;  and  '  revelation/ 
though  it  is  a  contribution  to  truth,  is  not,  in  its  first 
intention,  a  contribution  to  science. 

There  is  no  topic  so  much  discussed  among  friends, 
and  none  so  inexhaustible,  as  that  invariant  relation  of 
which  they  have  the  fact  before  their  eyes,  —  friend- 
ship. Friendship  doubtless  stimulates  the  mind,  but 
chiefly  to  feed  upon  itself.  As  for  lovers,  the  world 
knows  what  secret  topic  occupies  their  conversation,  and 
upon  what  theme  they  bring  forth  endless  poetry.  Song 
and  poetry  are  forms  which  infinitely  repeatable  truth 
must  take  :  they  thus  become  the  mystic's  specialty, 
and  revelation  must  consist  largely  of  the  song  of 
God.  "  He  hath  put  a  new  song  in  my  mouth,"  says 
the  Hebrew  mystic  —  a  song  whose  novelty  does  not 
appear  in  its  name  —  "  even  praise  unto  my  God." 

Not  infrequently  it  appears  to  the  mystic  that  this 
poetical  repetition  has  become  the  whole  purpose  of  his 
existence.  "  Thou  hast  put  off  my  sackcloth  and  girded 
me  with  gladness  to  the  end  that  my  glory  may  sing 
praise  to  Thee  and  not  be  silent."  A  more  literal  con- 
fession is  found  in  those  newly  unearthed  "  Odes  of 
Solomon."  "  As  the  work  of  the  husbandman  is  the 
ploughshare ;  and  the  work  of  the  steersman  is  the 
guidance  of  the  ship ;  so  also  is  my  work  the  psalm  of 
the  Lord :  my  craft  and  my  occupation  are  his  praises, 
because  his  love  hath  nourished  my  heart."  l  And  the 
English  translator  of  these  Odes  refers  in  his  preface  to 
the  similar  expression  of  Epictetus  :  "  Well,  then,  since 
most  of  you  have  become  blind,  ought  there  not  to  be 

1  Ode  16,  quoting  with  some  freedom  the  rendering  of  Mr.  Harris, 
Cambridge,  1909. 


CERTAINTY  AND  DOGMA  453 

some  man  to  fill  this  office,  and  on  behalf  of  all  to  sing 
the  hymn  to  God  ?  ...  If  then  I  were  a  nightingale,  I 
would  do  the  part  of  a  nightingale ;  if  I  were  a  swan, 
I  would  do  like  a  swan.  But  now  I  am  a  rational 
creature,  and  I  ought  to  praise  God  :  this  is  my  work  ; 
I  do  it,  nor  will  I  desert  this  post  so  long  as  I  am 
allowed  to  keep  it ;  and  I  exhort  you  to  join  in  this 
same  song." l 

The  mystic  consciousness  is  self -preoccupied  ;  and  the 
knowledge  that  comes  from  it  is  very  largely  knowledge 
of  itself. 

This  self-absorbed  character  of  mystic  knowledge 
may  explain  why  the  mystics  have  so  much  to  say  about 
"  the  truth  "  in  the  abstract,  without  suggesting  what 
the  truth  is.  The  mystic  knows  the  Truth,  so  he  assures 
us :  but  he  seems  to  spin  hopelessly  about  this  point, 
and  to  come  forward  very  slowly  with  any  statement 
of  its  contents.2 

May  it  be  that  the  mystic  is  more  sure  that  he  is 
sure  than  of  what  he  is  sure,  —  except  that  he  is  sure 

1  Discourses,  Book  I,  ch.  xvi.     Tr.  Geo.  Long. 

2  The  Odes  of  Solomon  may  again  illustrate  the  point : 

"  He  hath  filled  me  with  words  of  truth,  that  I  may  speak  the  same. 
Like  the  flow  of  waters  flows  truth  from  my  mouth,  and  my  lips  show 
forth  his  fruit.  And  he  has  caused  his  knowledge  to  abound  in  me;  for 
the  mouth  of  the  Lord  is  the  true  Word,  and  the  door  of  his  light." 
(Ode  12.) 

"  He  glorified  me  by  his  kindness,  and  raised  my  thought  to  the  height 
of  his  truth.  Herein  he  gave  me  the  way  of  his  precepts;  and  I  opened 
the  doors  that  were  closed;  and  the  bars  of  iron  which  I  was  about  to 
break  in  pieces  melted  and  dissolved  before  me  —  nothing  appeared  closed 
to  me,  because  I  was  the  door  of  everything."  (Ode  17.) 

With  how  much  show  of  substance,  and  yet  how  empty  of  definable 
content  is  all  this  celebration  of  "  the  Truth." 


464  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

of  God  and  of  his  own  relation  to  God?  In  these 
matters,  the  that  actually  precedes  the  what,  both  in 
time  and  in  importance. 

In  politics,  as  Walter  Bagehot  has  well  shown,  there 
is  a  moment  of  development  at  which  it  is  more  impor- 
tant that  there  should  be  law,  than  that  there  should  be 
good  law :  any  law  at  all,  at  this  moment,  is  good  law, 
because  law  is  better  than  disorder.  There  is  a  moment 
in  religion,  also,  at  which  any  God  is  a  good  God;  any 
absolute  is  a  good  absolute ;  any  certainty  at  all  is  a 
matter  of  supreme  importance.  This  moment  cannot 
last,  either  in  experience  or  in  reason  ;  but  it  is  enough 
to  give  color  to  the  primary  religious  attitude.  Any 
certainty  is  better  than  no  certainty ;  it  is  good  both 
for  the  mystic  and  for  his  hearers  to  have  touched  abso- 
lute assurance,  on  no  matter  what  subject.  To  be  cer- 
tain has  a  pragmatic  meaning  in  any  case ;  the  man  is 
disposed  to  resolute  action  in  general,  and  his  resolute- 
ness is  able  to  communicate  itself.  The  presence  of 
the  form  of  assurance  in  the  world,  is  the  presence  of 
some  emptiness  that  will  gather  to  itself  its  own  filling 
in  time ;  as  many  an  unequipped  good-will  by  practis- 
ing assurance  has  in  time  acquired  some  substance 
of  efficiency,  in  medicine  and  elsewhere.  And  who 
knows  but  that  the  various  pretences  through  which 
boys  grow  into  youth  and  manhood  show  also  some 
natural  precedence  of  the  form  over  the  matter :  any 
form  at  all  is  some  matter  —  such  seems  to  be  the  rule, 
a  germ  which  in  honest  soil  will  grow.  I  dare  say  that 
this  preliminary  law  of  Bagehot' s  is  a  child  of  this 
same  religious  assuredness  which  alone  in  this  world  is 
capable  of  absolute  command. 


CERTAINTY  AND   DOGMA  456 

Let  the  mystic,  then,  be  certain  of  his  "  the  truth," 
his  "  God's  truth,"  and  do  not  enviously  require  him 
at  every  turn  to  say  what  the  truth  contains.  No  one 
insists  more  than  I  that  it  must  contain  something,  and 
can  be  no  pure  ineffable  zero,  but  in  human  language 
we  must  be  willing  to  wait  for  its  deposit,  and  even  to 
put  up  with  much  error.  The  church,  let  me  say,  is 
always  right  in  claiming  to  be  infallible.  Any  church 
which  modestly  declines  such  pretension,  any  mystic 
who  in  his  main  point  admits  that  he  may  be  mistaken, 
does  thereby  stamp  itself  or  himself  as  fraudulent.  For 
if  one  knows  God,  he  will  also  know  that  he  knows  (so 
truly  testifies  Spinoza) ;  hence,  although  not  every  one 
that  claims  certainty  is  true,  every  one  that  disclaims  it 
is  false.  It  is  among  the  certain  ones  that  all  true 
prophets  will  be  found.  It  is  among  the  infallible 
churches  that  all  true  churches  will  be  found.  What 
the  church  chiefly  has  to  learn  is  not  to  be  infallible  in 
regard  to  too  much. 

The  infallibility  of  the  religious  institution  proceeds 
from  the  certainty  of  its  mystics ;  it  is  better  that  they 
also  should  not  be  certain  of  too  much,  should  be  willing 
to  abide  in  the  region  of  being  sure  chiefly  that  they 
are  sure  of  "the  truth,"  of  the  absolute.  But  the 
mystic  feels  the  clamor  of  the  crowd  for  bread ;  he  has, 
besides,  his  own  internal  emptiness  which  must  be  filled; 
he  trembles  on  the  verge  between  being  rightly  sure 
of  his  residual  object,  and  being  wrongly  sure  of  some 
more  visible  content.  As  a  matter  of  natural  history, 
the  mystic,  in  practical  affairs,  is  apt  to  carry  his  assur- 
ance too  far.  The  defect  of  his  virtue  may  be,  that  he 


466  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

becomes  absolute  on  too  slight  provocation.  He  is  the 
sturdy  will,  which  in  decline  may  become  the  tempera- 
mental dogmatist.  It  is  never  easy  to  deal  with  a  will 
of  this  sort,  which  supposes  itself  to  be  founded  on  an 
original  source  of  truth  at  once  immovable  and  inacces- 
sible. One  can  only  watch  its  career  (once  its  certainty 
invades  this  world  of  sense)  as  of  a  thing  of  Nature, 
closed  in  general  to  common  instruction;  and  be  grate- 
ful for  any  tendency  which  it  may  show  to  coincide 
with  reason.  But  the  indomitable  and  unreasonable 
person  is  neither  a  result  of  mysticism  nor  a  cause; 
he  is  a  well-known  natural  product,  widely  distributed: 
and  while  his  natural  firmness  may  be  magnified  by 
the  sanction  of  religion,  it  must  at  the  same  time  be 
rendered  safer  and  truer  by  the  essential  tendency  of 
worship  to  universalize  the  mind  and  bend  it  to  reason. 
Indeed,  is  not  mysticism  the  natural  antidote  for  over- 
mightiness  of  personal  will ;  and  perhaps  the  only  pro- 
tection of  society,  in  the  end,  against  its  most  vehement 
members?  For  if  the  Strong  Man  in  his  solitude  is 
not  in  company  with  the  Absolute  Other,  his  solitude  is 
indeed  absolute,  and  wholly  menacing.  The  worshipper 
by  the  nature  of  his  profession,  must  first  humble  him- 
self before  his  object,  and  with  all  his  strength  suppress 
his  strength,  until  it  begins  its  assertions  at  the  zero  of 
all  historical  content.  None  but  God  can  reach  the 
all-mighty  will  in  its  solitary  origins.  It  is  the  destiny 
of  religion  to  find  that  difficult  and  all-important  center 
of  a  just  infallibility,  which  curbs  and  defines  all  abso- 
lute assurance,  without  disastrously  abolishing  it. 

It  is  well  for  the  mystic  to  dwell  chiefly  upon  his 


CERTAINTY  AND   DOGMA  467 

absolute  certainty  of  the  absolute,  and  of  his  wholly 
original  relation  to  ancient  reality.  But  his  revelation 
cannot  stop  here,  because  his  experience  has  legitimate 
bearings  on  other  experience,  and  he  is  obliged  to  trace 
them  out.  The  mystic  will  become  a  knower  of  things 
new  as  well  as  old. 

Of  this  new  knowledge,  we  have  here  to  say  that  it 
comes  to  the  mystic  in  the  course  of  his  return  to  the 
world,  unsought  by  him.  He  has  known  God  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  world  ;  now  he  begins  to  know  his 
world  from  the  standpoint  of  his  new  experience  of  God, 
As  after  every  new  experience  the  familiar  experiences 
to  which  one  returns  are  lit  up  with  unfamiliar  light, 
shining  out  strange  and  reborn  :  so  as  the  mystic  resumes 
his  occupation  with  the  many  things,  he  finds  that  "  all 
things  have  become  new,"  and  this  novelty  he  will 
learn  how  to  distil  into  the  stock  of  human  wisdom  at 
large.1 

It  is  natural  that  these  new  impressions  should  be 
read  first  in  their  religious  bearings,  and  so  contribute 
first  to  the  dogmatic  enrichment  of  religion  itself.  From 
such  impressions  arise  those  dogmas  which  have  to  do 
with  the  world  and  man.  If  all  things  do  contain 
' memorials'  or  reminders  of  God,  the  mystic  will  see  in 
that  fact  a  divine  origin  of  the  world ;  and  in  time  these 
same  reminders  will  take  shape  as  a  doctrine  of  the 
divine  Word  or  Logos.  And  as  he  finds  reminders, 
he  finds  also  obstructions  to  the  reminding:  here 

1  Says  the  Ode-writer :  "  My  heart  was  cloven,  and  its  flower 
appeared  ;  and  grace  sprang  up  in  it ;  and  it  brought  forth  fruit  to  the 
Lord.  .  .  .  And  every  thing  became  like  a  relic  of  thyself  and  a  memorial 
forever  of  thy  faithful  works.  For  there  is  abundant  room  in  thy  Para- 
dise, and  nothing  is  useless  therein." 


458  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

begin    his   condemnations,    his    contributions    to    law 
and  prophecy.1 

This  way  of  making  judgments  is  a  very  common 
one ;  it  is  what  we  might  call,  judgment  by  compatibil- 
ity or  incompatibility  of  mood.  All  of  our  earlier 
moral  judgments  are  of  ithis  sort.  A  dominant  per- 
sonal relationship  (say  of  child  to  parent)  governs  one's 
attitude  to  all  sorts  of  things,  not  so  much  through  ver- 
bal command,  as  through  a  perception  of  what  would 
harmonize  or  jar  with  the  conscious  quality  of  that 
relationship.  The  recurrence  of  the  presence  of  the 
person  gradually  defines  the  judgment.  In  the  case  of 
the  mystic,  the  various  approaches  which  he  makes  to 
his  God  after  meeting  his  world  and  judging  it,  become 
so  many  questions  to  which  he  finds  a  yes  or  no,  accord- 
ing as  his  consciousness  of  God  is  accessible  to  him  or 
not.  God  shows  thereby  what  he  loves  and  what  he 
hates;  and  though  there  is  much  weary  guessing  as  to 
the  reasons  for  the  presence  or  the  absence  of  divine 
favor,  yet  in  the  course  of  time  inductions  emerge, 
"experimental  wisdom"  of  fairly  stable  sort.  These 
resulting  judgments  are  thus  due  to  what  F.  B.  Jevons 
has  happily  called  "  supernatural  selection,"  in  contrast  to 
the  natural  selection  of  survival  by  actual  utility.2  And 
all  such  judgments,  social,  cosmological,  and  moral,  are 
at  the  same  time  judgments  about  the  nature  of  God ; 
are  so  many  developments  of  the  knowledge  of  God, 
made  possible  by  this  continuous  alternation  in  experi- 

1  This  process  also  we  see  in  the  Odes  of  Solomon  :  "  And  I  forsook 
vanity,  and  turned  to  the  Most  High  my  God,  and  I  was  enriched  by  his 
bounty  ;  and  I  forsook  the  folly  which  was  diffused  over  the  earth  — 
yea,  I  stripped  it  off,  and  cast  it  from  me." 

2  Introduction  to  the  history  of  religion,  ch.  viii. 


CERTAINTY  AND   DOGMA  459 

ence.  The  mystic's  preparation  is  an  epitome  of  such 
empirical  judgments  about  God,  that  is  to  say,  of  the 
kind  of  disposition  which  God  will  favor.  Thus  the 
mystic  contributes  little  by  little  to  the  dogmatic  con- 
tent of  religion;  and  these  dogmas  have  their  own 
methods  of  trial  and  selection. 

In  this  origination  of  new  judgments,  the  mystics  have 
done  their  harm  in  the  world,  —  being  sure  of  things 
that  are  only  partially  true.  We  thought  that  the  mys- 
tic would  do  well  to  be  slow  in  concrete  creativeness. 
But  taking  the  whole  bulk  of  dogmatic  utterance 
together,  we  must  still  judge  that  the  harm  done  is 
infinitely  less  serious  than  would  have  been  the  harm 
of  losing  that  same  material  and  the  assurance  with  it. 
The  mystic's  blunders  have  their  indispensable  truth ; 
and  partial  truth  may  be  pragmatically  truer  than  the 
completely  guarded  statement.  Most  mystic  utterances 
are  untrue ;  as,  for  example,  most  of  Emerson's  statements 
are  untrue.  His  continual  volley  of  the  small  cartridges 
of  dogma  is  a  symptom  of  mystical  habit ;  they  are  a 
minor  rill  of  mystical  enlightenments.  And  doubtless 
to  his  own  knowledge  and  intention  many  of  his  state- 
ments are  partial.  He  writes  esoterically,  that  is,  for 
the  reader  who  has  the  sense  and  good-will  to  supply 
the  cautions  and  conditions  for  his  statements.  That 
word  of  his  already  quoted,  uNo  one  can  harm  me  but 
myself"  is  esoterically  true,  empirically  untrue;  but 
how  far  superior  to  all  such  guarded  and  accurate  state- 
ments as  we  might  make  of  it.  The  valid  doctrines  of 
the  church  are  in  the  same  case ;  their  truth  is  literal, 
but  esoteric.  It  is  capable  of  complete  translation  into 


460  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

philosophic  propositions  about  the  world  and  man  and 
the  Absolute,  —  in  the  course  of  infinite  time.  But 
meanwhile  it  conveys  truth  to  the  man  of  good-will  and 
insight ;  indispensable  truth  ;  would  we  could  also  say, 
"  and  nothing  but  the  truth." 

The  mystic  gives  us  the  thing  which  is  to  be  modified. 
There  are  many  who  can  supply  the  modification  ;  but 
who  else  could  have  pulled  down  from  heaven  that  sub- 
stance ?  In  the  positive  dogmas  of  the  mystic  we  find 
absolute  truth  getting  its  first  relations  to  facts  :  its 
second  and  third  and  subsequent  relations  will  be  found 
in  time;  but  meanwhile  we  have  the  thing,  and  men  can 
live  by  it.  It  is  the  mystic's  function  to  set  theses  into 
the  world,  crude  positive  theses ;  antitheses  will  come  of 
their  own  accord :  but  the  thing  that  wins  immortality, 
after  all  the  corrections  of  thought  and  experience,  will 
have  personal  identity  with  that  original  thesis. 

Of  the  mystic's  knowledge,  then,  in  summary  survey, 
we  have  to  say  this.  That  the  contents  of  '  revelation ' 
are  twofold.  There  is  first  the  certainty  and  praise  of 
God,  and  of  the  mystic's  relation  to  God ;  this  knowl- 
edge moves  within  its  own  circle,  and  has  no  apparent 
fruit  nor  progress,  being  to  an  external  view  self- 
absorbed  and  empty,  not  much  else  than  certainty  of 
certainty.  But  secondly,  there  is  the  positive  contribu- 
tion of  the  mystic  and  prophet  to  the  concrete  spiritual 
wealth  of  mankind,  a  creativity  to  which  we  can  discern 
no  limit. 

Thus  it  is  that  the  knowledge  of  God  which  is  in 
intention  the  end  of  the  mystic's  knowledge  is  also  its 
beginning.  The  knowledge  of  the  oldest  becomes  the 


CERTAINTY  AND   DOGMA  461 

parent  of  the  newest  knowledge.  And  not  alone  in 
the  domain  of  religious  truth.  For  in  the  light  of  this 
experience  all  other  experience,  we  say,  has  become 
changed  and  of  new  meaning.  Many  of  the  judgments 
which  the  mystic  now  coins,  judgments  contributory  to 
science  and  the  arts,  will  appear  to  him  unparented. 
They  simply  arise  in  his  mind.  The  same,  I  think,  may 
be  said  of  all  our  unparented  knowledge,  that  knowl- 
edge which  we  attribute  vaguely  to  '  inspiration/  and 
of  which  we  speak  dogmatically,  saying,  "  It  must  be 
so  "  :  all  such  knowledge  has  as  one  parent  this  same 
original  knowledge  of  the  eternal.  This  will  be  the 
thesis  of  our  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE  CREATIVITY  OF  RELIGION:   THEORY  OF 
INSPIRATION 

FROM  time  to  time  the  methods  of  religion  have 
impressed  us  as  being  methods  fit  for  the  origi- 
nation of  new  thought  and  of  new  value,  if  any  such 
thing  is  possible  on  this  planet.  And  I  believe  that 
we  must  recognize  in  worship  the  very  process  through 
which  religion  becomes  historically  fertile  in  the  sense 
of  our  first  speculation  regarding  the  role  of  religion  in 
history.1  It  is  our  purpose  now  to  enter  as  we  can  into 
the  logic  and  meaning  of  the  creative  event,  and  to 
sketch  its  re-echoings  in  life  generally. 

For  creativity  has  its  method  and  logic  ;  not  such  as 
binds  it  or  predetermines  it,  but  such  as  gives  it  root, 
lodgment,  and  effect.  Any  valuable  creativity  is  far 
removed  from  pure  chance  or  irresponsibility  in  things. 
It  has  its  place  and  its  conditions,  just  as  in  the  world 
of  organic  life,  creation  and  birth  have  their  own 
assigned  organic  method  and  quota  of  energy  in  the 
economy  of  the  life-cycle  :  whether  or  not  it  is  an  easy 
matter  to  define  the  parentage  of  novelty,  some  parent- 
age it  must  have.  The  world  that  shall  be  emerges 
from  the  world  that  is  by  the  appearance  of  the  purely 
new;  yet  that  emergence  is  subject  to  some  control 
and  consent  of  the  world  that  is :  unless  the  present  in 

1  Chapter  ii. 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  463 

some  fashion  loves  and  desires  the  future,  the  future 
will  bear  no  progeny.  In  so  far,  a  theory  of  origi- 
nation is  possible ;  and  what  is  more  to  be  wished  for 
than  insight  into  creativity  ? 

•It  is  an  old  observation  that  moral  and  cognitive 
ideas  tend  to  form  self-perpetuating  systems;  they 
grope  toward  equilibrium,  working-harmony  with  each 
other  and  with  experience,  until  they  strike  an  arrange- 
ment which  goes  on  reproducing  itself,  not  leading 
beyond  itself  by  any  further  stroke  of  experience. 
This  is  the  settled  character,  of  men,  races,  states, 
times. 

The  structure  of  such  a  moral  system  was  hinted  at 
in  several  places  by  Aristotle.  Thus  in  the  Nicoma- 
chean  Ethics  (n,  2),  "Strength  is  produced  by  eating 
much  food  and  by  undergoing  much  severe  labor ;  and 
no  one  can  do  this  so  well  as  he  who  is  strong  .  .  . 
(similarly)  by  abstaining  from  pleasures  we  become 
temperate,  and  when  temperate  are  best  able  to  abstain. 
.  .  .  (In  general)  that  same  class  of  actions  which 
develops  a  given  virtue  is  itself  furthered  and  energized 
by  that  virtue."  Aristotle  is  observing  that  virtue  some- 
how is  presupposed  in  acquiring  virtue  ;  that  it  must 
aid  in  its  own  acquisition ;  l  conversely,  that  if  it  is 
absent  we  are  shut  out  from  it,  as  he  who  has  no 
strength  is  shut  out  from  that  working  and  eating  which 
produces  strength.  These  systems,  circles,  groups,2 
have  thus  an  apparently  fatalistic  character.  Only  he 

1  An  observation  that  might  have  reconciled  him  with  Plato  if  he 
had  pursued  it  farther. 

3  Groups  in  the  mathematical  sense,  defined  chiefly  by  the  rule  that 


464  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

who  is  already  temperate  can  become  temperate ;  only 
he  who  is  already  wise  can  gain  wisdom.  Aristotle 
himself  will  admit  to  the  study  of  ethics  only  those  who 
are  already  mature  and  well-trained,  prepared  to  admit 
the  necessary  first-premises  for  his  reasonings.  The 
good  he  defines  with  a  deliberate  circle  as  that  which 
the  good  man  judges  to  be  good ;  the  good  man  being 
defined,  in  turn,  as  he  who  values  what  is  really  good. 
Thus  the  good  and  the  good  man  adjust  themselves 
to  each  other,  and  recognize  themselves  each  by  the 
other.  There  is  no  appeal  from  their  position ;  nor, 
on  these  principles  alone,  is  there  any  way  of  knowing 
whether  what  the  "  good  men  "  of  any  time,  or  of  all 
times,  regard  as  good  is  really  good.  For  our  blind- 
spots  perpetuate  themselves  as  well  as  our  true  visions : 
every  type  of  character  has  a  conception  of  the  good 
which  it  sustains  and  is  in  turn  sustained  by.  Hence 
every  type,  good  or  bad,  tends  to  lose  the  power  of 
self-criticism :  the  '  best '  has  no  way  of  discovering 
its  own  defects.  There  is  no  way  here  for  growth, 
novelty,  creativity.1 

The  ultimate  resistance  to  any  innovation  is  this 
approximate  self-sufficiency  of  the  set  of  ideas,  moral 
and  other,  which  we  already  have,  the  tendency  of 

a  combination  of  any  two  elements  of  the  group  according  to  the  charac- 
teristic operation  of  the  group  produces  always  another  member  of  the 
same  group,  never  an  object  falling  outside  that  group. 

1  Whatever  is,  in  the  world,  whether  defective  or  not,  tends  to  as- 
sume the  form  of  organic  completeness,  mutual  self-support  of  parts, 
self-propagation,  and  thus  to  justify  its  existence  by  immanental  struc- 
ture :  whatever  is  pretends  to  be  right.  On  the  other  hand,  whatever 
pretends  to  be  self-sufficient,  and  to  justify  itself  only  by  its  group  form 
and  self-propagating  powers,  is  to  be  suspected  of  defect :  whatever 
merely  is,  is  wrong. 


RELIGION   CREATIVE  465 

that  set  of  ideas  to  reproduce  within  its  own  kind, 
exclusively.  In  so  far  as  we  are  stupid,  we  can  only 
stupidly  try  to  overcome  stupidity ;  in  so  far  as  we  are 
selfish,  we  make  selfish  efforts  to  escape  the  rewards 
of  selfishness  —  as  by  giving  to  charity  for  the  sake  of 
treasure  in  heaven ;  in  remorse  for  falsity,  we  try  to 
right  ourselves,  yet  anxiously  preserving  our  face :  and 
we  observe,  in  others  if  not  in  ourselves,  that  defects 
are  not  overcome  by  this  kind  of  trying.  In  just  such 
futile  endeavors  is  not  our  total  humanity  bound,  in 
so  far  as  it  hopes  for  any  genuine  originality  in  what- 
ever direction  ? 

But  group-enclosedness  can  in  some  cases  be 
destroyed,  as  vortex-rings  are  destroyed,  by  a  touch 
from  outside  the  group  —  a  touch  positive  enough 
to  be  disorganizing.  And  in  so  far  as  we  can  trace 
the  inner  process  of  creative  thought,  such  as  history 
has  so  far  known,  we  find  just  such  group-burstings 
taking  place ;  and  we  can  discern,  I  believe,  something 
of  the  conditions  under  which  such  burstings  and  origi- 
nations occur. 

It  is  indeed  only  in  recent  times  that  invention  has 
been  conjoined  with  the  power  of  self-description  ;  and 
with  the  willingness  to  be  autobiographical :  but  we 
need  few  instances  to  put  us  in  possession  of  the  prin- 
ciples at  work.  For  invention  is,  in  essence,  no  rare 
event ;  every  soul  of  man  that  lives  and  works  in  the 
world  is  creating  at  every  moment  of  his  life  some 
infinitesimal  rill  of  novelty.  We  need  then  only  such 
examples  of  creativity  as  may  bring  us  to  consciousness 
of  what  goes  on  in  ourselves.  We  shall  find  that  the 


466  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

moments  of  creation  are  moments  in  which  the  old  is 
not  less,  but  more,  intensely  present  to  consciousness ; 
it  is  grasped  as  a  whole,  and  realized,  as  for  the  first 
time ;  and  in  that  realization  we  shall  see  emerging  a 
dogma  of  rejection,  "  This  (old  position)  cannot  be  the 
truth,"  "  This  cannot  be  so."  Which  negative  dogma 
will  make  way  for  a  positive  dogma  —  equally  unpar- 
ented so  far  as  that  moment  discerns — "  This  contrast- 
ing thing  must  be  so,"  and  herewith  the  new  idea  has 
its  footing  in  the  world,  born  as  something  necessary 
—  having  therefore  a  parentage  though  as  yet  unname- 
able,  a  parentage  which  we  may  be  able  to  make  evident. 
We  may  take  a  few  instances  from  Tolstoy,  —  a  mind 
richly  creative,  dogmatic,  artistic  and  withal  trench- 
antly autobiographical  in  all  his  works,  making  it  pos- 
sible to  follow  with  advantage  the  beginnings  of  new 
ideas.  Here  is  an  extract  from  his  diary,  written  after 
seeing  an  execution  in  Paris,  long  before  his  political 
opinions  had  begun  to  take  shape, — an  early  and  nega- 
tive item  in  the  creation  of  those  opinions : 

"  When  I  saw  the  head  separate  from  the  body,  and  how 
they  both  thumped  into  the  box  at  the  same  moment,  I  under- 
stood, not  with  my  mind,  but  with  my  whole  being,  that  no 
theory  of  the  reasonableness  of  any  present  progress  can  jus- 
tify this  deed ;  and  that  though  everybody  from  the  creation 
of  the  world  on  whatever  theory  had  held  it  to  be  necessary, 
I  knew  it  to  be  unnecessary  and  bad."  1 

Another  instance  from  his  educational  journal,  on  pun- 
ishing a  boy  in    his  experimental   peasant-school  for 
stealing,  by  hanging  a  placard  on  his  back: 

1  This  and  the  following  extracts  from  Tolstoy  are  taken  from  Ayl- 
mer  Maude's  Life  of  Tolstoy. 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  467 

"  I  glanced  at  the  face  of  the  punished  boy  which  had 
become  yet  paler,  more  suffering,  and  harder  than  before,  and 
I  thought  of  convicts ;  and  suddenly  I  felt  so  ashamed  and 
disgusted  that  I  tore  the  stupid  card  off  him,  told  him  to  go 
where  he  liked,  and  became  convinced  —  and  convinced  not 
by  reason,  but  by  my  whole  nature  —  that  I  had  no  right  to 
torment  that  unfortunate  boy  ;  and  that  it  was  not  in  my  power 
to  make  of  him  what  I  and  the  inn-keeper's  son  wanted  to 
make  of  him.  I  became  convinced  that  there  are  secrets  of 
the  soul  hidden  from  us  on  which  life  may  act,  but  which 
precepts  and  punishments  do  not  reach." 

In  Tolstoy's  religious  development,  his  new  ideas  emerge 
with  the  same  unparented  certainty,  as  he  has  recorded 
his  experience  in  "My  Confession."  Let  me  quote 
instances  along  the  way  of  that  remarkable  progress. 

"  One  can  only  go  on  living  when  one  is  intoxicated  with 
life ;  as  soon  as  one  is  sober,  it  is  impossible  not  to  see  that  it 
is  all  a  mere  fraud.  .  .  .  Sooner  or  later  my  deeds  will  be  for- 
gotten, and  I  shall  not  exist.  Then  why  go  on  making  any 
effort.  .  .  .  How  can  men  fail  to  see  this  ? 

"  I  now  see  that  if  I  did  not  kill  myself,  it  was  due  to  some 
dim  consciousness  of  the  invalidity  of  my  thoughts.  I,  my 
reason,  has  acknowledged  life  to  be  unreasonable.  But  how 
can  reason,  which  (for  me)  is  the  creator  of  life,  and  (in 
reality)  the  child  of  life,  deny  life?  There  is  something 
wrong  here. 

"Then  I  turned  my  gaze  upon  myself,  on  what  went  on 
within  me,  and  I  remembered  that  I  only  lived  at  those  times 
when  I  believed  in  God.  As  it  was  before,  so  it  was  now  :  I 
need  only  be  aware  of  God  to  live ;  I  need  only  forget  him  or 
disbelieve  in  him,  and  I  die.  .  .  .  4  What  more  do  you  seek  ? ' 
exclaimed  a  voice  within  me.  '  This  is  he.  He  is  that  with- 
out which  one  cannot  live.  To  know  God  and  to  live  is  one 
and  the  same  thing ! '  .  .  .  and  the  light  did  not  again  aban- 
don me." 


468  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

And  now,  having  won  for  himself  this  ancient  truth,  he 
finds  insights  arising  in  him  of  a  more  novel  character, 
but  with  the  same  dogmatic  abruptness.  It  cannot  be, 
he  thinks,  that  believers  of  other  confessions  than  that 
of  the  Greek  Church  are  without  true  religion  ;  whence 
it  follows  that  the  church  must  be  wrong  in  condemn- 
ing them.  And  with  regard  to  war,  and  executions, 

"  It  was  impossible  not  to  see  that  killing  is  an  evil,  repug- 
nant to  the  first  principles  of  any  faith.  Yet  they  prayed  in 
the  churches  for  the  success  of  our  arras ;  and  the  teachers  of 
the  faith  acknowledged  killing  to  be  an  act  resulting  from  the 
faith." 

The  whole  spiritual  history  of  this  man  is  a  series  of 
like  unparented  inspirations.  And  it  is  not  otherwise 
with  minds  of  greater  psychological  sophistication  crea- 
tive in  other  fields.  Psychologists  are  seldom  autobio- 
graphical, by  some  strange  contrariety ;  but  Fechner, 
who  is  of  their  greatest,  does  often  write  in  confessional 
vein,  and  here  is  a  passage  much  to  our  present  pur- 
pose.1 Sitting  on  a  bench  in  the  Rosenthal  at  Leipzig 
on  a  warm  sunny  morning  with  plenty  to  occupy  his 
senses,  he  falls  to  musing  as  follows  : 

"  A  strange  illusion  is  this.  At  bottom,  all  before  me  and 
about  me  is  night  and  silence  :  the  sun  which  so  dazzles  me  is 
in  truth  but  a  dark  ball,  seeking  its  way  in  darkness.  ...  In 
this  universal  darkness  and  desolation  and  silence  which 
embraces  heaven  and  earth  there  hover  certain  beings  who  but 
singly  and  inwardly  possess  brightness  and  color  and  sound, 
—  mere  points  probably,  which  emerge  out  of  the  night  and 
sink  back  into  it,  without  leaving  behind  them  any  vestige  of 
their  light  and  sound ;  who  see  one  another,  though  nothing 

1  From  the  opening  of  his  book,  Die  Tagesansicht  gegeniiber  der 
Nachtansicht. 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  469 

between  them  is  lighted ;  speak  with  one  another,  though 
nothing  between  them  resounds.  So  it  is  to-day,  so  it  was 
from  the  beginning,  so  will  it  be  to  all  eternity." 

Now  conies  to  Fechrier  the  view  of  the  natural  man  in 
all  its  vehement  contrast  to  this  world-picture,  which  to 
Fechner  is  but  the  Weltanschauung  of  his  age  by  general 
consent.  This  natural  man 

"  believes  that  he  sees  objects  about  him  because  it  is  actually 
light  about  him ;  he  does  not  believe  that  the  sun  begins  to 
brighten  the  world  first  behind  his  eyes.  .  .  .  His  illusion, 
furthermore,  will  certainly  never  yield,  no  matter  how  firmly 
established  (by  consensus  of  science  and  philosophy)  may  be 
the  knowledge  that  it  is  illusion.  May  it  not  be  that  this 
knowledge  is  itself  an  illusion?  Is  it  not  the  truth  that 
endures  longest,  —  and  is  not  that  which  longest  endures  the 
truth  ? 

"  Must  not  that  Night- view  shrink  in  fright  from  itself  if 
with  a  faithful  mirror  before  it,  it  could  know  that  it  is  itself 
which  it  sees  therein  ?  Nay,  had  the  world  at  first  seen  the 
entire  hopelessness  and  footlessness  and  vanity  of  that  view 
with  the  clarity  which  came  to  me  in  that  hour,  it  had  never 
been  able  to  win  its  place  as  a  World-view.  And  though 
clarity  is  the  last  thing  in  these  matters,  the  last  thing  will  be 
clarity.  As  surely  as  day  follows  night,  so  surely  upon  that 
Night-view  of  the  world  a  Day-view  must  follow,  which  will 
give  foundation  to  the  view  of  the  natural  man  —  not  contra- 
dict it.  And  the  world  will  appear  in  a  new  connection,  in  a 
new  light,  and  under  new  and  positive  points  of  view." 

Here  is  the  beginning  of  Fechner's  new  idea,  which 
with  true  prophecy  he  indicates  as  the  idea  of  the  gen- 
eration succeeding  him,  the  view  which  in  our  own  way 
we  have  tried  to  take  possession  of.  This  idea  also 
comes  to  its  originator  as  a  dogma,  an  "  It  must  be 


470  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

so,"  namely,  that  the  view  of  the  natural  man,  this  per- 
sistent view,  is  the  true  one. 

We  need  look  no  further  for  instances  of  the  creative 
event:  these  may  be  typical  of  all,  whether  in  art  or 
morals  or  science  or  religion. 

In  all  these  experiences  of  dawning  novelty,  we  may 
observe  the  same  sharpened  consciousness  of  the  old  or 
usual  idea,  the  idea  with  reference  to  which  the  new  is 
defined  as  new  and  different.  This  old  idea  is,  as  we 
say,  freshly  realized;  which  means,  freshly  connected 
with  reality,  especially  with  the  reality  which  the  thinker 
is  conscious  of  in  himself — that  which  is  realized  is 
"  brought  home, "  made  a  conscious  part  of  his  own  vivid 
and  literal  present  world.  And  this  old  idea,  in  being 
realized,  is  at  the  same  time  repudiated ;  repudiated,  not 
with  any  pure  and  blank  negation,  but  in  favor  of  some 
positive  thing  which  in  time  will  make  itself  known.  In 
this  realizing  and  repudiating,  the  new  thing  is  already 
asserting  itself,  and  doing  conscious  work.  These  are 
the  psychological  phenomena  which  in  various  propor- 
tions always  surround  the  birth  of  novelty. 

And  the  event  of  this  birth  itself  is  to  be  traced,  as 
I  think,  to  this  touching  to  the  quick  of  self-conscious- 
ness: the  old  idea  has  penetrated  to  the  self;  the  self 
has  been  stung  by  it;  and  in  the  reflexion  thereby 
occasioned,  the  new  thing  is  engendered.  It  is  when 
Tolstoy  finds  himself  "ashamed  and  disgusted" — judg- 
ing himself;  it  is  when  Fechner  lets  the  "natural  man" 
in  him  spill  his  scorn  on  the  futile  theorist  of  his  habit- 
ual selfhood;  it  is  when  some  deep-set  love  of  life  and 
reality  reaches  a  point  of  wrath  and  habit-breaking,  or 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  471 

in  other  moods,  of  wholly  joyful  inertia-killing;  it  is 
in  such  moments  that  creation  takes  place.  I  wish, 
then,  in  the  first  place,  to  connect  the  event  of  creation 
with  the  event  of  reflexion,  —  that  is,  with  the  emergence 
of  a  se(/*-consciousness  out  of  a  consciousness  that  is 
pursuing  in  all  smoothness  the  lines  of  the  empirical 
object-world. 

In  reflexion,  the  focus  of  consciousness  shifts  in  such 
a  way  that  without  losing  wholly  from  sight  the  object 
with  which  one  has  been  engaged,  the  interest  now 
attaches,  not  primarily  to  that  object,  but  to  the  self  in 
its  relations  with  that  object.  These  reflexive  move- 
ments of  consciousness  are,  in  general,  occasioned  by  some 
defeat  in  the  ordinary  inertias  of  the  mind.  As  when, 
in  speaking,  one  becomes  aware  of  throat,  or  difficulty 
of  words,  or  clothing.  As  when  the  hunter  returns 
empty  from  the  day's  chase,  reflecting  that,  after  all, 
what  he  wanted  was  not  so  much  the  game  as  the  pur- 
suit. Or,  as  when  in  success  one  comes  to  the  end  of  an 
absorbing  task,  and  finds  himself  at  a  loss  what  next  to 
do:  he  is  for  the  moment  "thrown  back  upon  himself" 
as  upon  a  being  who  during  the  absorption  has  been 
forgotten — his  reflexion  is  occasioned  by  the  defeat  of 
his  usual  habits  of  occupation  and  attention. 

And  in  all  such  occasions  the  organic  function  of 
reflexion  seems  to  be  precisely  the  demand  of  the  situa- 
tion for  something  new.  The  continuous  thread  of  my 
empirical  self-consciousness  is  no  doubt  due  to  some  per- 
manent friction  in  applying  my  existing  stock  of  ideas 
to  experience,  and  the  persistent  demand  for  creative- 
ness  thereby  occasioned.  We  should  expect  reflexion  to 
have  something  to  do  with  creation.  And  for  the  further 


472  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

reason,  that  the  Self  stands  permanently  outside  all  those 
closed  or  closing  groups  of  mental  and  moral  habit;  the 
more  perfectly  self-sufficient  and  self-propagating  these 
groups  become,  the  more  they  fuse  with  the  object-world 
— becoming  object  of  self  hence  different  from  self — 
though  in  their  perfect  working  not  reminding  the  self 
of  itself.  He  who  can  revert  to  himself  is  free  from  all 
groups,  and  has  in  himself  that  which  can  disorganize 
them  and  see  beyond  them.  The  only  question  is,  how 
one  is  able  to  revert  to  himself,  that  is,  how  reflexion  is 
possible.  For  if  defeat  is  the  only  occasion  for  reflexion, 
and  a  self-sufficient  mental  group  does  not  meet  with 
any  defeat,  we  are  still  unable  to  free  ourselves  from 
its  bondage,  through  our  inability  to  reflect.  How  is 
reflexion  possible  f  Is  not  this  the  question  to  which 
every  critique  of  creativity  must  come? 

Now  my  proposition  is  that  the  power  to  reflect 
depends  upon  the  power  to  find  your  Absolute,  in  the 
last  resort  upon  practical  religion.  It  is  through  alli- 
ance with  the  Absolute  that  man  is  able  to  reflect:  it 
is  through  his  reflexion  that  he  becomes  creative  of 
novelty,  system-destroying  novelty. 

Of  reflexion  generally,  we  know  that  it  is  not  under 
direct  and  complete  control  of  the  will.  Self-conscious- 
ness is  subtle  and  elusive  ;  self-knowledge,  or  significant 
self-consciousness,  is  the  most  difficult  of  knowledges. 
Success  in  seizing  that  in  self  upon  which  one  would  turn, 
in  self -analysis,  self-expression,  discerning  of  one's 
actual  motive  or  actual  state  of  feeling,  depends  upon  a 
certain  gift,  a  genius  of  self-capture,  a  skill  in  fixing 
the  retreating  shadow;  and  for  this  there  seem  to  be  no 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  473 

rules  of  technical  procedure.  We  only  know  that  the 
Other  Mind  is  the  chief  aid  to  self-knowledge,  the  only 
environment  in  which  it  can  attain  high  development. 
Socially-fostered  reflexions  may  bring  the  individual  to 
the  general  level  of  social-self-knowledge :  they  cannot, 
however,  lift  him  above  that  level,  and  it  is  precisely 
this  social  closed-group  which  it  is  most  important  to 
break  through.  Here  we  revert  to  a  principle  already 
appealed  to  in  another  context :  that  there  is  no  criti- 
cism of  any  self  or  system  except  in  present  view  of  a 
positive  content  beyond  them.  And  that  which  is  out- 
side every  finite  system,  "  the  Not  of  all  that  man  can 
think  or  say,"  is  precisely  the  absolute  with  which  reli- 
gion seeks  and  gains  vital  alliance.  If  God  has  once 
been  known,  the  world  and  the  self  must  thereafter  be 
seen  under  the  survey  of  this  experience.  I  am  able  to 
reflect  upon  any  world-self  system  because  and  only 
because  I  have  already  experienced  something  beyond 
it.  It  is  Tolstoy's  certainty  of  God  that  gives  him 
power  to  criticize  the  Church.  It  is  Fechner's  sense 
of  the  validity  of  some  more  primitive  world-view  that 
separates  him  from  the  accepted  "Night- view."  In 
brief,  all  of  my  partial  reflexions  are  parmted  "by  some 
previous  total  reflexion.  But  total  reflexion,  that  is, 
reflexion  upon  the  whole  of  things  temporal,  is  precisely 
a  definition  of  the  cognitive  side  of  mystic  experience. 
And  conversely,  reflexion  might  be  defined  as  a  par- 
tial mystic  experience.  For  reflexion,  like  worship, 
abandons  the  forward  and  outward  direction  of  atten- 
tion, and  reverts  inward,  seeking  by  denial  to  separate 
itself  from  immersion  in  the  object  which  occasions  that 
reflexion,  and  succeeding  only  in  so  far  as  its  denial  is 


474  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

supplemented  by  a  positive  vision  of  the  reality  which 
that  object  does  not  contain.  Reflexion  also  illustrates 
the  principle  of  alternation  ;  self-knowledge  and  object- 
knowledge  growing  by  intervals  of  self-abandonment 
each  in  the  other.  And  the  motive  of  worship,  so  far 
as  it  is  a  rejection  of  the  world,  we  thought  to  find, 
even  as  the  occasion  for  reflexion  is  found,  in  some 
friction  in  the  usual  objective  processes  of  the  mind. 
Reflexion  is  the  generalized  form  which  worship  takes 
in  our  experience :  it  is,  so  to  speak,  the  agent  for  the 
dissemination  of  religious  attainment  throughout  the  body 
of  experience.  It  has  no  necessary  religious  character ; 
for  this  belongs  only  to  the  total  reflexion.  But  all 
such  partial  mystical  movements  are  dependent  for  their 
vigor  and  sense  upon  the  total  alternation  of  conscious- 
ness, and  what  it  can  grasp  of  the  Absolute  and  its 
quality.  Our  "  scent  for  reality,"  our  "  grip  "  upon 
fact  and  value,  are  our  experience  of  God  as  being 
thought  with.  At  any  given  time  this  sense  of  reality 
is  as  a  possession  of  the  individual,  inalienable  from  his 
personality,  his  own  definition  and  character,  the  most 
intimate  fact  about  him,  wholly  independent  of  his 
piety  or  intentional  relation  to  God.  But  the  conditions 
for  the  maintenance  of  this  "instinct,"  for  its  perpetual 
regeneration,  and  withal  for  its  growth,  require  as  in  the 
case  of  every  instinct  that  we  take  self-conscious  posses- 
sion of  that  which  is  by  nature  present ;  that  this  which 
is  thought  with  shall  be  renewed  also  by  being  from  time 
to  time  thought  of  and  made  an  immediate  experience.1 

1  In  simpler,  but  more  barren  fashion,  the  logic  of  novelty  may  be 
exhibited  thus  : 

Assume  a  point,  A,  which  shall  be  outside  every  particular  system  of 
thought  or  character,  outside  every  group  ;  and  adopt  the  general  prin- 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  476 

The  scope  of  our  principle  will  be  extended  when  we 
observe  that  induction  is  a  mental  process  akin  to  reflex- 
ion. It  has  been  regarded  as  typical  of  all  invention,  — 
this  process  of  induction,  whereby  the  mind  arrives  at 
a  new  law,  a  new  synthesis,  a  new  aperqu  of  essential 
likeness,  a  new  simile  or  metaphor,  a  new  hypothesis,  a 
new  speculative  order  among  the  facts  of  experience. 
Induction  is  sometimes  described  as  a  movement  from 
parts  to  whole  or  to  universal :  worship  and  reflexion 
may  be  described  in  the  same  terms.  Induction  is  not 
compellable  by  rule;  this  also  it  has  in  common  with 
mystic  experience  and  reflexion.  No  fixed  method  can 
be  laid  down  in  logic  whereby  the  law  of  a  given  set 
of  phenomena  can  be  determined.  There  are  good 
ways  of  preparing  yourself  to  discover  such  laws  and 
likenesses:  but  when  you  have  followed  all  the  ' induc- 
tive methods/  you  must  wait  for  your  gift.  The  prob- 
lem 'To  find  the  common  element  in  a  given  group  of 
objects '  has  no  solution ;  there  is  no  general  formula 
for  discovering  integrals.  Even  simple  observation  is 
a  gift,  simple  observation  being  the  elementary  opera- 
tion in  induction;  and  simple  observation  may  serve  to 
show  the  kinship  we  are  asserting : 

ciple  that  any  such  system,  B,  when  seen  from  the  standpoint  of  A,  changes 
its  character,  becoming  for  experience,  say  B'.  With  these  two  assump- 
tions we  have  defined  at  once  the  conditions  for  an  infinite  progress  in  B. 
For  as  B  by  reflexion  from  A  becomes  B',  so  B'  by  reflexion  from  the 
same  A  becomes  B",  and  so  on.  Thus  endless  novelty  springs  from  recur- 
rent contact  with  that  which  is  eternally  the  same.  The  second  of  these 
assumptions  is  equivalent  to  the  principle  formally  touched  upon,  in  chap- 
ter xiv  (The  Need  of  an  Absolute)  :  namely  that  Sein  with  Bewusstsein 
gives  Werden.  This  logical  scheme  is  accurate  so  far  as  it  goes,  but  has 
nothing  to  say  of  the  quantitative  or  qualitative  values  of  the  changes  in 
question,  nor  of  the  psychological  conditions  under  which  B  is  viewed 
from  the  standpoint  of  A,  nor  of  the  growth  of  A  within  its  own  identity. 


476  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

I  observe  nothing  unless  I  question ;  and  I  question 
nothing  unless  I  conceive  a  thing  as  being  other  than 
it  turns  out  to  be.  What  I  see  at  the  theater  and  what 
you  see  there  are  different  things ;  because  you  are  con- 
scious of  more  ways  in  which  the  play  might  have  been 
better  or  other  than  it  is.  You  note  a  trick  of  carriage 
or  voice  which  you  trace  to  a  certain  training  or  racial 
origin;  I  observe  nothing  but  a  carriage  and  a  voice  — 
it  does  not  occur  to  me  that  they  have  any  peculiarity, 
that  they  could  have  been  different.  I  have  no  questions 
ready,  —  I  do  not  see  outside  of  them.  Simple  observa- 
tion is  a  gift:  and  is  great  hypothesis-making  a  gift 
of  any  radically  different  sort  than  this  of  conceiving  the 
thing  otherwise,  —  that  the  apple  should  not  fall,  or 
the  earth  not  be  a  plane,  or  the  center  of  things  else- 
where than  where  we  are?  In  one  case  as  in  the  other, 
one  is  helped  by  all  manner  of  acquaintance  with  facts, 
experience,  imagination,  training,  "  spreading  the  divine 
net " ;  but  making  thereby  no  fore-fated  capture  of  the 
divine  idea.  We  will  ascribe  the  successful  result 
neither  to  chance  nor  to  industry ;  shall  we  say  to  genius, 
thereby  asserting  that  our  induction  has  some  parentage, 
we  know  not  what?  Precisely  so;  and  what  is  genius 
again,  but  that  same  "  scent  for  reality  "  wherein  reflex- 
ion has  its  source  also? 

As  reflexion  is  a  judgment  upon  my  self  as  a  whole, 
so  induction  is  a  judgment  upon  some  external  self  or 
class  as  a  whole.  Induction  is  external  reflexion  ;  and 
reflexion  is  internal  induction.  And  for  the  most  part 
these  operations  are  simultaneous,  parts  of  the  same 
mental  movement.  It  is  one  and  the  same  thing  to 
become  aware  that  "  All  the  objects  about  me  are  inani- 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  477 

mate "  as  to  become  aware  that  "  I  am  alone " ;  the 
former  is  an  induction,  the  latter  a  reflexion.  To 
observe  that  "All  these  books  have  fine  print,"  and  to 
locate  in  my  eyes  a  subtle  discomfort,  are  probably  not 
two  mental  operations,  but  one.  It  does  not  flash  upon 
my  mind  in  any  case  that  "  All  A's  are  B  "  without  a 
simultaneous  exposition  of  self-consciousness,  like  the 
recovery  of  a  lost  name.  Ability  to  invent,  to  induct, 
to  discern  likenesses,  depends  on  a  degree  of  conscious- 
ness which  is  at  the  same  time  power  to  reflect,  to  detect 
what  it  is  in  me  that  is  restless  and  groping  for  further 
predicate-giving.  The  inventive  artist,  poet,  musician, 
has  his  moments  of  prelude  to  idea-making  in  which 
musing  he  can  hardly  tell  whether  he  is  scrutinizing 
his  objects  or  the  stirrings  in  himself.  Keflexion  and 
induction  are  of  the  same  fabric,  and  have  the  same 
conditions  for  success.  Every  induction  is  induced  by 
a  prior  induction,  ultimately  by  a  total  induction,  or 
judgment  about  the  whole  of  things,  —  none  other  than 
my  whole-idea,  derived  from  whatever  knowledge  of  the 
whole  and  of  God  my  experience  has  built  up  for  me. 
Every  induction  is  at  the  same  time  a  deduction,  then, 
—  an  "It  must  be  so,"  parented,  though  from  the 
background  of  consciousness,  by  an  insight  which  in 
its  origins  is  religious. 

Worship  then  in  its  most  generalized  meaning  is  the 
genus  of  which  reflexion  and  induction,  including 
simple  observation,  are  species;  and  mystical  movements 
of  the  mind,  reversions  to  that  which  is  relatively  total, 
in  infinite  replication  and  variety,  make  up  one  half  of 
the  whole  of  mental  life.  Herewith  I  think  we  have 


478  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

taken  into  view  in  principle  all  phases  of  creativity 
and  invention.  Invention  can  never  be  the  result  of  a] 
direct  effort  to  invent,  if  only  because  the  thing  to  be 
(invented  is  not  yet  seen.  No  one  by  taking  thought 
can  increase  his  stature ;  he  must  apply  himself  to  that 
through  which  the  increase  of  stature  may  come :  and 
he  who  would  invent  would  best  put  himself  about 
invention  by  strengthening  his  hold  on  reality.  He 
who  would  be  creative  in  any  direction  would  do  best 
to  pursue  that  from  which  alone  creativity  can  result, 
a  personal  knowledge  of  the  Absolute.  This  is  that 
"guidance  of  God"  for  which  men  may  legitimately 
pray,  and  expect  answer.  When  the  holy  spirit  is 
come,  he  shall  lead  you  into  all  truth ;  and  not  other- 
wise is  new  truth,  or  new  value  accessible  to  man- 
kind. Thus  religion  is  fruitful  through  worship:  and 
may  we  not  also  say,  it  is  the  one  fruitful  thing  in 
the  world? 

Whatever  religion  adds  to  human  wealth  is  not 
poured  in,  as  an  extraneous  gift:  it  comes  in  continuity 
with  what  that  individual  has  known  before.  No  man 
by  means  of  his  religious  insights  can  be  transformed 
from  ignorance  to  learned  ness.  The  fruits  of  inspi- 
ration are  not  such  as  labor  could  secure :  hence  they 
neither  displace  labor,  nor  produce  "unearned  incre- 
ments" in  the  field  of  human  exertion. 

It  is  true  that  certain  of  the  mystics  have  claimed 
much  imparted  knowledge,  even  of  the  informatory 
order.  Teresa  claims  to  have  received,  through  her 
devotions,  the  powers  of  description  and  literary  expres- 
sion, and  of  penetrating  the  meaning  of  the  Mass,  though 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  479 

Latin  was  to  her  an  unknown  tongue.  The  friends  of 
Boehme,  it  is  said,  would  bring  to  him  words  from  for- 
eign tongues  whose  meaning  he  would  divine  from  their 
sounds.  But  granting  to  the  full  the  historic  accuracy 
of  stories  like  these,  we  have  not  made  these  individuals 
learned.  A  type  of  education  they  do  accomplish,  quite 
germane  to  the  type  of  their  mighty  efforts  in  self- 
discipline, —  an  education,  namely,  in  self-knowledge 
and  in  human  nature  generally,  such  as  any  person 
with  similar  original  effort  might  hardly  fail  to  win. 
But  whatever  self-development  the  mystic  receives, 
he  receives  not  without  his  own  activity;  and  hence 
there  will  be  no  complete  breach  of  continuity  in  his 
knowledge. 

So  evident  has  it  become  to  us  that  the  inspirations 
of  religion  bear  the  marks  of  all  existing  limitations, — 
of  character,  of  times,  of  opinions,  —  that  products  of 
such  alleged  inspiration  have  been  interpreted  as  the 
deification  of  one's  own  thoughts  otherwise  established. 
The  mystic,  it  is  said,  is  governed  by  his  expectations. 
The  God  he  sees  is  the  God  he  has  been  led  to  define 
to  himself,  by  tradition  and  reflection.  The  ideal  he 
reaches  is  his  own  ideal,  that  is,  the  ideal  of  his  time, 
modified  by  his  own  individual  quality,  and  elaborated 
by  his  own  thinking.  The  practice  of  prayer  is  a  means, 
we  might  think,  of  selecting  from  one's  stock  of  ideas 
certain  ideas  to  which  we  wish  to  give  a  special  potency 
and  control ;  and  through  some  process  of  auto-sugges- 
tion, fixing  these  ideas  in  the  seat  of  power.  We  cannot 
doubt,  as  we  review  the  history  of  sainthood,  that  each 
saint  in  turn  has  reinforced  in  himself  by  his  devotion 
his  own  clarified  personal  equation,  and  the  sentiment 


480  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

of  tradition.  In  mediaeval  saintdom  what  do  we  find 
in  saintly  character  but  the  reproduced  pictures  of  still 
older  saints,  the  types  of  perfection  embodied  in  older 
eulogies  ?  —  a  certain  corporate  flavor  which  gives  us, 
indeed,  the  mid-age  fragrance  and  romance  ;  but  also 
the  mid-age  mustiness,  softness,  impure  purity,  and 
flabbiness  of  soul,  —  all  that  type  of  mind  which  in 
these  latter  days  Nietzsche  has  so  effectively  condemned, 
to  the  great  surgical  benefit  of  Christendom.  Where 
else  in  history  can  we  find  so  distinctive  a  spiritual 
mannerism  fastened  upon  a  thousand  turbulent  years 
with  successful  solidarity  ?  Religion,  on  this  showing, 
might  well  qualify  as  an  apt  instrument  of  spiritual 
conservatism,  perhaps  even  of  tyranny,  little  fitted  to 
encourage  originality  of  mind.  In  no  case  does  the 
good  of  which  the  mystic  catches  sight  seem  to  depart 
by  any  great  gulf  from  the  best  good  of  his  time. 

Herewith  the  mystic  finds  himself  accused,  and  not 
for  the  first  time,  of  opposite  faults  :  of  turning  in  a 
fast  circle,  and  of  detached  individual  caprice.  The 
truth  of  which  seems  to  me  to  be  this :  that  before  he 
can  be  original  he  must  first  be  as  unoriginal  as  possible, 
must  first  make  fast  whatever  he  can  fix  upon  as  tenable 
in  his  spiritual  environment.  All  of  his  negations  are 
in  the  interest  solely  of  the  best  he  yet  knows ;  and  so 
far  as  his  preparation  remains  primarily  his  own  activity, 
he  gets  no  step  beyond  the  best  he  knows.  Of  himself 
he  can  accomplish  nothing  but  continuity,  even  of  the 
most  binding  type:  no  one  can  be  more  conscious  than 
he  of  his  inability  to  "  pass  beyond  himself."  His  best 
efforts  do  but  tighten  about  him  the  net  of  his  own 
limitations.  Hence  the  mystic's  vision  of  the  good 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  481 

will  change  slowly,  for  the  most  part :  but  the  important 
matter  for  us,  at  present,  is  that  it  changes  at  all. 

In  antagonism  to  rash  claims  to  supernatural  enlight- 
enment, free  from  human  limitations,  it  is  well  enough 
to  point  out  the  abundant  presence  of  these  ties.  When 
X  boasts  of  complete  novelty,  it  is  proper  for  Y  to  exult 
over  every  sign  of  antiquity  he  can  discover  in  it :  but, 
on  the  whole,  this  is  not  the  most  genial  and  profitable 
of  occupations.  "  Give  me  a  difference,  a  new  depar- 
ture," says  the  dialectician,  "  and  I  will  show  you  a 
likeness  in  the  midst  of  that  difference."  Good  :  that 
is  clever,  and  sometimes  important — but  does  it  banish 
the  miracle  of  difference  ?  Since  for  some  reason  (not 
wholly  good)  continuity  seems  the  self-explanatory  and 
obvious  aspect  of  our  living,  and  the  miracle  of  the 
world  to  lie  in  its  production  of  novelty,  it  is  an  obli- 
gation to  make  our  scientific  most  of  any  spark  of 
novelty  that  may  be  emitted  by  any  process  whatever. 
In  worship  and  its  results  we  see  everywhere  limitation, 
limitation  even  exaggerated ;  but  limitation  in  the  pro- 
cess of  overcoming  itself.  The  right  and  wrong  of  the 
traditional  moral  quality  will  infect  the  act  of  worship ; 
but  ask  how  this  traditional  error  is  to  be  put  off,  how 
historically  it  has  at  last  been  put  off — and  we  shall  find 
that  it  is  this  very  act  of  worship  which  (in  some  form 
or  other)  is  the  appointed  way  of  escape  from  it.  Wor- 
ship is  undoubtedly  a  bad  thing,  when  bad  men  worship 
—  and  all  men  are  bad:  but  he  who  would  therefore 
abolish  it  abolishes  his  only  hope  of  better  men. 

The  worshipper's  God  will  contain  a  magnified  image 
of  himself — that  is  inevitable.  But  the  act  of  bringing 
one's  view  of  self  into  conjunction  with  an  actual  con- 


482  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

sciousness  of  the  Absolute  is  an  act  which  must  do 
something  to  disrupt  the  limitations  of  that  idea.  The 
worship  of  God  in  human  form  is  never  identical  with 
the  worship  of  man.  The  known  God-function  tends  to 
disjoint  the  humanity  of  the  thing  worshipped.  What 
the  worshipper  has  before  him  is  not  man,  but  man 
denied;  man  at  war  with  all  that  is  false  in  his  own 
humanity ;  man  overcoming  himself ;  man  in  Unter- 
gang,  as  Nietzsche  would  have  it,  giving  way  to  Super- 
man. This  process  depicted  in  the  heavens  takes 
place  in  the  minds  of  the  worshippers ;  and  their  own 
humanity  exposed  to  the  blast  of  their  own  experi- 
enced absolute  becomes  newborn,  a  thing  different  by 
some  slight  increment  from  what  it  was  before.  Every 
man  knows  the  true  God,  that  is  our  first  premise ;  let 
his  God-pictures  be  what  they  may,  they  are  all  doomed 
and  dying  pictures,  pictures  of  the  man  that  is  being 
put  behind,  on  the  way  to  the  man  that  is  to  be. 

Would  I  persuade  my  neighbor  to  put  off  his  defects, 
his  faults  of  vision,  his  hereditary  quirks  and  hateful- 
nesses,  I  can  accomplish  nothing  effective  and  central 
but  this  —  to  show  him  himself  in  the  light  of  his  own 
absolute.  For  to  find  this  absolute,  as  the  mystic  finds 
it,  he  has  been  obliged  to  reject  what  he  can  of  his 
empirical  trappings,  and  most  of  what  I  despise  in  him 
has  been  detected  by  himself,  if  not  in  his  own  prepara- 
tory introspection  and  katharsis  of  the  passions,  yet  in 
his  return  from  the  contemplation  of  Deity.  How  shall 
he  detect  the  rest  ?  How  shall  he  overcome  what  is  so 
abominably  rooted  in  him  that  he  carries  it  to  heaven 
with  him  and  spoils  my  prospects  of  enjoying  life  there  ? 
He  may  never  see  it ;  in  which  case  I  must  either  wish 


RELIGION  CREATIVE  483 

him  dead,  and  well  out  of  this  fair  universe  with  all  his 
foulness,  or  else  I  must  wish  him  once  well  in  the  fresh 
air  and  sun,  with  a  more  complete  negation  of  himself, 
through  a  better  hold  upon  his  own  absolute — I  must 
wish  him  a  better  mystic.  The  only  ultimate  appeal  of 
man  to  man  is  built  on  man's  grasp  of  God.  And  what 
I  can  see  to  be  true  of  my  neighbor  is  not  less  true 
of  myself. 

In  whatever  field  the  originator  may  act,  or  the 
reformer,  or  the  creator,  his  procedure  will  be  the  same. 
It  is  as  he  re-takes  his  world,  having  for  the  love  of 
God  turned  his  back  upon  it,  that  his  world  appears  to 
him  new  with  a  novelty  which  he  is  himself  giving  to 
it  or  eliciting  from  it.  He  is  the  bearer  of  a  treasure 
of  "  recollection  "  not  essentially  different  from  that  of 
which  Plato  speaks;  and  under  these  rays  whatever 
object  he  turns  upon  becomes  cognitively  and  morally 
fruitful,  full  also  of  value  and  life.  This  is  not  the 
work  of  the  impersonal  idea ;  it  is  the  work  of  a  per- 
sonal experience  ;  and  in  so  far  as  this  vision  of  the 
absolute  is  his  own  vision,  colored  by  his  own  individual 
quality  and  resonance,  his  new  endowment  is  but  a 
deeper  spring  of  that  factor  which  we  sometimes  call 
'  temperament,'  sometimes '  instinct/  sometimes  'genius.' 
His  creation  is  still  his  own,  and  bears  the  stamp  of 
his  individuality.  His  relation  to  his  absolute  has  not 
obliterated  him,  nor  overmastered  him  :  enabling  him  to 
reflect,  it  has  given  to  him  himself ;  enabling  him  to 
create,  it  has  given  to  him  a  freedom  which  might  well 
be  called  freedom  in  the  concrete. 

Nor  does  the  creator  create  without  the  aid  of  that 


484  THE   FRUITS  OF   RELIGION 

world  to  which  he  is  contributing.  Creating  means 
nothing  but  bringing  to  birth  in  particular  historic  fact 
and  context.  Though  the  creator  begins  by  destroy- 
ing, that  which  he  can  never  destroy  nor  wish  to  destroy 
is  the  definite  sensible  existence  upon  which  he  must 
iknit  his  novelty.  The  true  element  in  everything  false 
is  the  fact  that  it  has  existed,  and  has  occupied  a  place 
in  the  world  of  particular  things ;  it  seems  just  to  say 
that  it  is  the  false  thing  (as  thing,  not  as  false)  that  is 
the  other  parent  of  the  new,  in  parentage  giving  up  its 
life  to  that  which  replaces  it.  Of  all  fields  of  human 
creation  that  of  the  historic  deed  exhibits  at  its  best  this 
continuous  descent  of  the  idea  into  the  particular ;  and 
creative  historic  action  is  the  supreme  moral  achieve- 
ment. The  mystic  in  historic  action  is  termed  the 
prophet :  in  a  study  of  the  prophet  we  may  span  the 
final  term  of  religion's  work  in  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 
THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS 

have  seen  through  what  channels  religion  con- 
tributes  to  the  wealth  of  human  life,  not  creating 
anything  for  men,  but  creating  men,  conferring  on 
them  power  and  freedom  to  create.  We  have  now  to 
take  the  one  important  step  which  remains  to  complete 
our  view  of  the  effective  insertion  of  religion  in  the 
world :  namely,  to  enquire  how  human  happiness  and 
misery  are  affected  by  religion  and  worship.  It  is  the 
ultimate  problem  of  practical  religion,  and  indeed  of  all 
practical  thought,  to  make  reckoning,  not  with  the 
general  principles  on  which  this  world  is  framed  and 
furthered,  but  with  the  actual  data  of  fortune,  the  par- 
ticular shapes  and  configurations  of  happening,  as  fate 
or  providence  pile  them  up  about  us  and  with  appar- 
ently random  distribution.  It  is  a  matter  of  the  last 
importance  for  any  view  of  life  whether  it  leads  men  to 
find  their  welfare  within  the  stream  of  historic  circum- 
stance, risk,  accident,  or  outside  of  it  —  even  though 
just  outside.  Our  philosophy  and  our  religion  take  one 
hue  or  another  according  as  we  regard  our  particular 
fortunes  as  matters  of  chance,  whose  evils  we  must 
know  how  to  transmute  and  be  superior  to ;  or  as  them- 
selves necessary  elements  and  ingredients  of  our  welfare. 

I 

Mankind  very  early  overcomes  the  illusion  that  his 
happiness  is  dependent  upon  the  possession  of  particu- 


486  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

lar  objective  things  wherein  values  lie.1  The  first  use 
life  makes  of  reason  is  to  distinguish  between  the  thing 
and  the  value :  we  are  not  bound  to  honey  in  order  to 
get  sweetness ;  nor  are  we  bound  to  sweetness  to  get 
savor  for  our  food ;  nor  to  savor  for  satisfaction.  By 
a  long  course  of  experience  in  which  our  desires  are  greatly 
generalized  and  provided  with  an  immense  gamut  of 
substitution,  the  world  of  values  begins  to  float  apart, 
like  a  world  of  ghosts,  between  self  and  the  world  of 
things,  gaining  embodiment  in  this  object  or  in  that 
only  by  a  stroke  of  will.  No  man's  happiness  is  bound 
to  the  possession  of  any  particular  thing  unless  he 
himself  freely  binds  it  thereto. 

And  if  personal  choice  rather  than  necessity  must 
determine  the  objects  of  my  pursuit,  it  is  personal  choice 
that  must  hold  me  to  any  adopted  pursuit;  my  whole 
relation  to  particular  things,  persons,  objects  beyond 
myself,  becomes  arbitrary,  tentative,  liable  to  repudia- 
tion. It  is  only  my  will,  not  my  view  of  objective  neces- 
sity, that  holds  me  to  any  given  historic  course.  No 
particular  thing  or  definable  object  is  necessary  to  my 
happiness.  And,  alas,  no  particular  thing  or  definable 
object  is  sufficient  for  it.  There  is  a  thorough  absence 
of  correspondence  between  values  and  historic  objects. 
A  certain  alienation  from  history  results  in  this  way 
simply  from  universal  experience. 

And,  in  the  main,  this  freedom  from  things  has  been 
an  advantage.  So  great  is  the  contingency  in  the 
matter  of  historic  success  in  controlling  any  particular 

1  The  outline  of  the  following  argument  was  first  stated  in  an  address 
before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  of  Leland  Stanford  University, 
entitled  "  The  Necessary  and  Sufficient  Conditions  for  Human  Happiness." 
Parts  of  that  address  I  have  used  in  this  chapter. 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  487 

object,  so  difficult  the  acquisition  of  assured  power,  so 
elusive  these  visible  vessels  of  our  values,  especially 
those  more  precious  living  objects  of  love  and  social 
pride,  that  no  degree  of  independence  has  been  thought 
too  great.  Religion  for  the  most  part  has  found  it  well 
not  to  diminish  but  to  emphasize  and  enlarge  this  natural 
separation  of  ours  from  the  material  and  particular 
prisons  of  our  happiness. 

Philosophy,  too,  has  worked  in  the  same  direction  ; 
reminding  men  to  what  extent  each  one  is  the  maker 
of  his  own  happiness,  to  what  extent  all  the  necessary 
conditions  for  happiness  lie  within  the  self,  and  not  at 
all  out  there  in  history  and  circumstance.  To  be  "  phil- 
osophical "  is  nothing  other  than  to  practise  this  belief. 
Every  age  has  its  seer  who  renews  this  ancient  doctrine. 
We  listen  to  him  and  believe  him  :  it  seems  that  all 
assurance  of  happiness  depends  on  finding  it  a  wholly 
inward  affair,  and  even  that  all  justice  requires  it.  For 
in  so  far  as  welfare  depends  on  external  things,  some  of 
its  conditions  will  be  beyond  control :  those  who  succeed 
will  succeed  in  part  by  leave  of  circumstance ;  and  there 
will  be  those  that  fail  without  fault  of  their  own,  and 
without  recovery.  Hence  men  have  always  demanded 
of  the  sage,  "  Teach  us  to  be  happy,"  as  if  this  were 
indeed  an  art  open  to  every  one  who  can  possess  himself, 
let  fortune  be  what  it  may,  an  art  of  the  inner  man,  not 
of  external  mastery. 

Hear  the  words  of  Maeterlinck,  who  with  inimitable 
union  of  power  and  art  has  made  this  doctrine  a  liv- 
ing force  in  our  own  time  :  "  It  is  true,"  he  writes, 
"that  on  certain  external  events  our  influence  is  of  the 
feeblest ;  but  we  have  all-powerful  action  on  that  which 


488  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

these  events  shall  become  in  ourselves.  Nothing  befalls 
us  that  is  not  of  the  nature  of  ourselves.  The  event 
in  itself  is  pure  water  that  flows  from  the  pitcher  of 
fate,  and  seldom  has  it  either  savour,  or  perfume,  or 
colour.  But  even  as  the  soul  may  be  wherein  it  seeks 
shelter,  so  will  the  event  become,  joyous  or  sad,  tender 
or  hateful,  deadly  or  quick  with  life.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  destiny  is  just.  (But)  there  is  nothing  in  the  world 
more  just  than  happiness,  nothing  that  will  more  faith- 
fully adopt  the  form  of  our  soul,  or  so  carefully  fill  the 
space  that  our  wisdom  flings  open."1  The  controlling 
conditions  of  welfare  lie  within,  and  not  in  that  current 
of  outer  event,  the  current  of  history,  or  as  Maeterlinck 
calls  it,  of  destiny. 

And  have  we  not  in  our  own  analysis  of  value  con- 
cluded that  worth  is  conferred  on  things,  not  by  their 
intrinsic  qualities,  but  by  that  with  which  we  think  them? 
It  is  the  idea  that  creates  what  beauty,  what  desirability 
of  any  kind,  things  seem  to  possess ;  it  is  not  in  their 
power  to  rob  us  of  this,  —  it  is  not  in  their  power  to 
make  or  mar  our  happiness.  Happiness,  may  we  say, 
is  the  idea  of  the  Whole  in  unhindered  operation  upon 
experience.  He  who  knows  God  knows  how  to  be 
happy  in  this  world,  having  in  himself  both  the  source 
of  positive  value  and  that  by  which  all  pain  can  be 
transmuted. 

We  tend,  I  say,  to  believe  such  doctrines  as  these ; 
it  seems  that  we  must  believe  them,  or  condemn  the 
world.  On  the  other  hand,  we  feel  uneasy  under  them. 
They  seem  to  leave  us  without  a  full  and  sufficient 

1  Wisdom  and  Destiny,  tr.  A.  Sutro,  pp.  28,  29,  etc. 


THE   PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  489 

warrant  for  historic  action  and  effort.  These  are,  after 
all,  stoical  doctrines  at  heart;  the  stoic  would  have 
us  sufficient  in  ourselves :  and  yet,  if  we  examine  the 
sources  of  his  strength  we  shall  find  that  the  stoic  sage 
is  depending  upon  a  sense  of  intimate  kinship  with  that 
very  destiny  to  which  he  professes  himself  superior. 
"  Nothing  for  me  is  too  early  or  too  late,  0  Universe, 
which  is  in  time  for  Thee."  That  which  makes  it 
possible  for  such  a  thinker  to  open  himself  to  affection 
and  to  experience  is  a  magnificent  faith  in  something 
outside  himself.  Such  a  shut-in-ness  as  can  encounter 
no  solidity  of  value  in  the  world  beyond,  and  is  without 
assurance  of  any  other  victory  than  that  of  its  own 
poise  or  of  its  own  value-creations  is  necessarily  without 
power  of  self-abandonment.  The  pride  of  creatorship 
in  this  realm  of  values,  which  is  indeed  the  highest 
prerogative  of  our  individual  selfhood,  may  turn  to  the 
veriest  curse  at  the  moment  when  the  goods  in  our 
hands  appear  to  us  as  nothing  but  our  own  creations. 
Creation  is  a  solitary  business;  we  are  therefore  not 
surprised  to  find  here  and  there  a  soul,  lofty  in  this 
citadel  of  inner  values,  smitten  with  the  horror  of 
imprisonment  in  its  own  freedom,  ready  to  accept  any 
touch  of  fate,  ready  to  cry  out,  "  Strike,  sacred  Reality," 
if  it  may  but  regain  the  sense  of  validity  outside. 

Self-sufficient  we  cannot  be.  And  this  truth  our 
theory  of  value  has  taken  into  account.  For  that 
whole-idea  cannot  be  had  by  any  but  the  completest 
exposure  to  the  world  of  objects;  nor  can  the  vigor 
and  integrity  of  that  idea  be  maintained  by  any  self- 
enclosed  determination  of  the  will,  but  only  by  resort- 
ing to  its  source  in  experience.  Nevertheless,  the  con- 


490  THE  FRUITS   OF  RELIGION 

ditions  for  happiness  do  still  lie  outside  history,  do  they 
not?  The  current  of  particular  event  has  no  decisive 
importance  for  our  welfare.  We  love  life  ;  but  we  love 
it  as  second-best,  as  a  region  wherein  the  idea  meets 
resistance.  The  mystic  has  found  his  absolute  object 
by  help  of  negation  after  negation  ;  he  is  free  not  indeed 
from  reality,  but  from  all  particulars ;  he  waits  as  one 
whose  chief  good  is  delayed  —  as  one  reconciled  with 
God,  and  also  as  a  fruitful  and  useful  citizen,  but  as 
one  who  has  no  absolute  treasures  laid  up  here  where 
moth  and  rust  corrupt,  and  where  the  thieves  of  cir- 
cumstance break  through  and  steal.  What  has  our 
mystic,  then,  to  do  with  fortune  ? 

II 

In  order  to  answer  this  question,  we  shall  have  to 
develop  a  stage  further  our  account  of  the  inner  nature 
of  happiness.  Happiness  we  know  has  its  quantitative 
variation  :  it  increases  with  the  body  of  idea  we  can 
bring  to  bear  on  any  subject;  it  is  in  large  part  a  mat- 
ter of  horizon.  The  happy  man  in  any  situation  is  the 
man  to  whom  that  situation  is  no  cave,  who  in  the  midst 
of  it  can  hold  his  broader  bearings,  bringing  to  it  the 
quiet  sense  of  affairs  and,  in  the  end,  of  eternity.  The 
institution  in  which  I  am  a  conscious  factor ;  the  state, 
which  flings  over  a  petty  personal  existence  a  large 
dome,  a  dome  of  concrete  inclusiveness  and  eternity, 
any  totality  of  which  I  form  an  actual  part,  the  crowd 
in  which  I  am  able  to  lose  myself,  even  the  sense  of  my 
own  insignificance  as  a  forgotten  cog  in  the  wheels 
of  universal  event  —  all  of  these  add  to  the  quantity  of 
my  happiness.  But  while  happiness  may  be  much  or 


THE   PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  491 

little,  there  is  here  no  account  of  unhappiness,  which 
is  a  matter  of  quality  not  of  quantity  of  experience.  It 
is  the  question  of  unhappiness  that  we  have  now  to 
face. 

On  its  inner  side,  I  think  we  must  say  of  unhappiness 
that  it  is  in  all  cases  a  matter  of  conscious  conflict,  that 
is,  of  divided  attention  or  distraction.  I  am  unhappy 
whenever  my  idea  is  torn  between  two  or  more  objects 
that  claim  it.  For  instance,  he  who  is  unable  to  bury 
himself  in  anything  because  of  the  simultaneous 
demands  of  everything  else,  is  clearly  in  so  far  simply 
unhappy.  If  guilt  causes  unhappiness,  it  is  through  the 
disruption  of  selfhood  caused  by  the  unbanishable  call 
of  ignored  obligations.  If  sorrow  is  unhappy  sorrow, 
it  is  because  of  some  persistent  conflict,  as  between  a 
beloved  past  and  the  insistent  present  objects  of  atten- 
tion, the  unwelcome  necessity  perhaps  of  living  on  and 
away  from  that  past.  And  even  of  physical  pain ;  if  it 
is  able  to  suspend  happiness  for  a  moment,  it  is  because 
it  half  succeeds  in  pinning  consciousness  within  the 
focus  of  its  own  event.  More  than  half  the  pain  of 
pain  is  the  imprisonment  of  personality,  and  the  unequal 
struggle  of  the  spirit  to  get  free  and  be  itself.  Unhap- 
piness is  dividedness  of  mind. 

And  this  notion  of  unhappiness  is  corroborated  by 
the  fact  that  whatever  wipes  out  our  fragmentation  and 
induces  in  us  a  wholeness  of  attack  gives  back  the 
happiness  which  is  continually  slipping  from  our  grasp. 
Such,  in  general,  is  the  function  of  recreation  and  art, 
of  worship  and  all  its  partial  analogues,  so, far  as  they 
bear  directly  on  happiness,  not  merely  to  enhance  our 
idea,  but  to  reunite  its  fragments.  Art  instils  into  us 


492  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

its  own  unity;  and  especially  music,  which  combines 
the  movement  of  a  restless  will  with  the  peace  of  a 
completed  totality.  It  matters  not  how  we  regain  our 
singleness  of  thrust  —  whether  by  the  ascent  of  a  hill, 
or  in  prayer,  or  through  a  book  or  a  human  being :  the 
ground  of  the  blessedness  of  such  a  moment,  and  of 
the  moments  of  action  that  issue  from  its  canopy,  lies 
in  its  power  to  recall  the  divergent  channels  of  our 
attention  into  unity,  to  "  make  us  whole  "  from  center 
to  limit  of  our  mental  range,  for  the  purposes  of  the 
next  undertaking.  Psychologically  speaking,  happiness 
may  now  be  described  as  the  continuous  undivided 
consent  of  my  whole-idea  to  the  experience  or  activity 
at  hand ;  and  the  empirical  mark  of  happiness  is  concen- 
tration, or  enthusiasm  of  action.  To  the  happy  man, 
things  and  deeds  appear  worth  while ;  his  actions  meet 
the  mark,  and  rebound  to  enhance  his  energy  for  the 
next  stroke ;  whereas  those  of  the  unhappy  man  strike, 
if  at  all,  like  spent  bullets,  or  shatter,  and  contribute 
nothing  to  his  self -continuance.  Whatever  restores 
wholeness  in  action  restores  happiness. 

Happiness,  on  this  showing,  does  certainly  not  depend 
immediately  on  external  things  at  all,  but  upon  our  own 
inward  mode  of  dealing  with  them.  If  it  were  within 
our  power  to  throw  the  whole  force  of  our  idea,  at  will, 
upon  any  object :  there  could  be  no  content  of  experi- 
ence however  hideous,  or  painful,  or  spiritually  grievous, 
which  could  make  us  unhappy.  But  is  it  possible,  or 
even  conceivable,  that  attention  could  be  so  brought 
within  the  will?  There  is  something  paradoxical  even 
in  such  a  supposition.  For  if  it  were  true,  then  no 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  493 

event  of  failure  could  dethrone  any  one's  happiness; 
we  should  be  unable  to  attach  unlimited  importance  to 
the  outcome  of  any  finite  enterprise;  that  is,  we  should 
be  unable  to  give  whole-hearted  attention  to  the  enter- 
prise; and  hence,  by  hypothesis,  we  should  be  unhappy. 
For  we  can  give  ourselves  with  but  half  a  will  to  under- 
takings whose  failure  can  alter  no  real  value.  It  seems 
a  condition  of  happiness  that  happiness  should  be 
destroyable  by  failure ;  otherwise  we  could  hardly  treat 
any  present  task  as  worth  the  effort  of  our  whole  will. 
The  type  of  attention  requisite  for  happiness  seems  to 
depend  on  a  belief  during  the  course  of  any  effort  that 
the  object  thereof  is  worth  my  whole  devotion  :  and  I 
cannot  at  the  end  of  such  effort,  if  I  fail,  thereupon 
repent  my  belief  or  change  it.  There  is  some  sophistry 
well  known  to  proverb  and  fable  in  allowing  defeat  to 
contradict  the  theory  of  the  endeavor —  namely,  that  the 
grapes  were  really  worth  having.  Defeat,  then,  must 
necessarily  split  attention,  leave  me  divided  between 
this  fact  to  which  I  must  attend  because  it  is  the  pres- 
ent reality,  and  that  not-present  object  to  which  my 
whole  effort  and  belief  had  prepared  me  to  attend. 
Defeat  must  necessarily  split  attention  and  create  unhap- 
piness,  unless  in  some  way  it  is  possible,  in  the  pursuit 
of  definite  ends,  to  combine  an  unlimited  attachment 
with  an  unlimited  detachment. 

Ill 

That  such  paradoxical  attitude  is  possible  is  indeed 
suggested  to  us  by  certain  familiar  facts  of  experience. 
Something  like  a  union  of  perfect  attachment  with 
perfect  detachment  does  exist  in  the  consciousness  of  the 


494  THE  FRUITS   OF  RELIGION 

good  sportsman,  or  of  the  good  experimentalist.  To 
the  good  sportsman,  defeat  in  any  contest  must  not 
leave  bitterness  behind,  nor  either  diminish  the  entire 
enthusiasm  for  the  next  attempt.  As  for  the  good 
experimentalist,  his  failures  become  sources  of  satisfac- 
tion to  him  just  in  proportion  as  he  has  spent  every 
effort  to  make  them  succeed :  for  the  withholding  of 
any  effort  leaves  it  uncertain  whether  or  not  the  failure 
is  a  genuine  failure,  and  need  not  be  tried  again ;  here, 
perfection  of  attachment  is  evidently  a  condition  for 
completeness  of  detachment.  And  we  can  see,  also, 
that  these  attitudes  are  largely  applicable  to  fortune 
generally.  To  some  measure,  the  happiness  of  life 
depends  upon  a  perfection  of  the  game  spirit :  to  "  get 
into  the  game"  accepting  its  rules  and  its  risks,  has 
been  given  as  the  best  available  rule  for  human  hap- 
piness. Something  hypothetical  or  even  histrionic 
seems  to  enter  into  our  conduct  with  this  temper ;  we 
assure  ourselves  that  we  are  staking  our  whole  souls 
on  this  issue  or  that,  but  we  know  in  our  hearts  that 
we  are  not;  we  know  that  defeat,  if  it  comes  as  it 
always  may,  will  not  destroy  our  integrity  of  spirit, 
and  therewith  our  happiness. 

So  much  the  wisdom  of  life  suggests;  and  it  leaves 
us  indeed  external  to  history,  superior  to  it,  even  in  a 
relation  of  moral  irony  toward  it.  We  play  as  if  our 
treasure  were  there,  knowing  that  it  is  not;  and  we 
must  so  play,  or  lose  even  that  happiness  which,  in 
striving,  we  have.  Is  this  a  satisfactory  attitude  toward 
history?  Is  drama,  play,  a  certain  inward  duplicity  in 
our  enthusiasms,  tolerable  on  the  whole,  as  perhaps  it 
may  be  tolerable  in  tentative  fragments  of  living?  Is 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  495 

"  the  game "  our  last  adjustment  to  destiny  ?  Is  it 
not  rather  itself  a  division  of  mind,  and  a  fundamental 
unhappiiiess ;  an  alienation,  even  though  a  subtle  one, 
from  the  world  in  which  we  must  perforce  act,  from  the 
particular  to  which  we  must  perforce  attend  ? 

The  modern  forms  of  stoical  doctrine  exhaust  all 
ingenuity  to  overcome  this  breach  and  to  reunite  with 
active  history  the  soul  which  they  have  fundamentally 
detached  therefrom.  They  assure  us  that  welfare  lies 
in  the  pursuit,  not  in  the  winning ;  from  which  it  follows 
that  we  must  mightily  pursue  and  act  even  though 
nothing  is  to  be  captured.  Or  we  are  shown  that  the 
world  of  particulars  and  accidents  is  here  to  produce  in 
us  the  moral  temper,  to  develop  the  soul :  it  is,  as  Fichte 
would  have  it,  the  externalized  material  of  our  duty  — 
whence  we  must  strenuously  open  ourselves  to  experi- 
ence for  the  love  of  our  character,  regardless  of  empirical 
outcome.  Or,  after  all,  the  great  interest  is  just  knowl- 
edge and  consciousness  itself,  which  can  never  be  sub- 
served by  any  withdrawal  from  facts  nor  injured  in 
their  untowardness.  This  is  Maeterlinck's  point  of 
view,  and  it  seems  to  me  the  best  possible  statement  of 
the  case :  "  To  the  sage,  truth  can  never  be  bitter.  He 
finds  more  pleasure  in  the  attempt  to  understand  that 
which  is,  than  in  the  attempt  to  believe  that  which  he 
desires.  There  is  no  gain  in  shutting  out  the  world, 
though  it  be  with  walls  of  righteousness."  Conscious- 
ness, self-knowledge,  knowledge  of  man  and  of  reality, 
—  this  is  the  great  result  of  our  insertion  in  history  — 
nothing  else  matters.  "  Destiny  has  only  the  weapons 
we  give  her.  She  is  neither  just  nor  unjust,  nor  does 


496  THE  FRUITS   OF   RELIGION 

it  lie  in  her  province  to  deliver  sentence  on  man.  She 
whom  we  take  to  be  goddess  is  a  disguised  messenger 
only,  come  very  simply  to  warn  us,  on  certain  days  of 
our  life  that  the  hour  has  sounded  at  last  when  we 
needs  must  judge  ourselves."  In  all  the  literature  of 
Stoicism  there  is  no  finer  conception  than  this  of  the 
way  in  which  the  disenfranchised  soul  is  yet  held  in 
whole-hearted  attachment  to  the  detail  of  fortune. 

But  the  ruses  are  not  successful ;  the  will  cannot  thus 
be  decoyed  into  unreserved  espousal  of  the  pursuits  of 
life.  The  world  of  common  action  having  no  part  in 
the  absolute  end,  being  there  as  a  means  only,  becomes 
touched  with  a  sense  of  incomplete  reality  or  illusoriness, 
such  as  we  discern  in  the  atmosphere  of  Maeterlinck's 
earlier  writings.  It  fails  to  hold  that  concentrated 
allegiance  of  the  idea  which  is  necessary  to  happiness. 
The  inadequacy  of  the  stoical  principle  even  in  its  best 
forms  has  impressed  itself  on  our  racial  instinct,  and 
the  world  generally  has  taken  refuge  in  another  prin- 
ciple, that  of  altruism,  or  vicarious  happiness.  Success 
there  must  be,  but  it  need  not  be  my  success :  mastery 
of  fortune  there  must  be,  but  it  need  not  be  my  mastery. 
Let  me  but  know  or  believe  in  some  power  that  is  con- 
trolling or  shall  control  physical  event  and  history  ;  then 
the  event  begins  to  have  a  meaning:  and  I  can  find  my 
happiness  in  the  assured  victory  of  that  power,  though 
free  as  any  stoic  from  the  need  of  victory  in  my  own 
person.  History  has  entered  into  the  absolute  goal  of 
things  as  a  member ;  and  all  history  thereby  becomes 
contributory  and  important. 


THE   PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  497 

IV 

The  language  of  the  altruistic  principle  is  familiar  to 
us.  It  is  the  language  at  once  of  resignation  and  hope. 
It  is  the  language  of  the  patriot :  "  I  may  fail,  but  the 
idea  of  liberty  must  conquer  "  ;  "  This  measure  of  mine 
may  be  defeated,  but  the  policy  or  cause  must  triumph." 
It  is  often  the  language  of  the  scientist;  or  again  of 
the  parent  who  regains  in  his  sons  the  hope  for  all  that 
he  has  not  himself  accomplished.  Such  vicarious  hap- 
piness must  be,  in  fact,  the  greater  part  of  the  actual 
joy  of  any  living  man ;  for  no  one  can  reach  maturity 
without  identifying  his  happiness  to  some  extent  with 
the  welfare  of  his  friend,  the  success  of  his  party,  or 
the  establishment  of  his  opinion,  quite  apart  from  any 
prosperity  of  his  own.  The  scope  of  this  principle  is 
universal ;  and  taken  together  with  the  prevalent  belief 
that  all  cosmic  affairs  are  so  connected  that  they  form 
a  single  history  in  which  all  can  participate,  it  offers  a 
plausible  solution  of  our  dilemma  —  to  many  minds,  the 
only  possible  solution.  For  in  such  an  interconnected 
world  as  this,  every  being  must  lie  open  to  every  other: 
vicarious  joy  can  be  no  more  actual  than  vicarious  suf- 
fering, so  long  as  we  take  into  our  survey  anything  less 
than  the  whole  movement  of  life.  The  same  knowledge 
or  sympathy  that  brings  in  upon  me  the  joy  of  remote 
triumph  brings  in  also  the  more  pungent  distress  of  the 
many  near  defeats.  In  the  race  there  can  be  no  per- 
fection till  all  are  perfect,  no  complete  happiness  till  all 
are  happy.  What  sure  triumph,  therefore,  can  there 
be  for  any  except  in  the  common  end,  indefinitely  dis- 
tant, the  end  wherein  all  triumph ;  and  what  present 


498  THE  FRUITS   OF  RELIGION 

happiness  can  there  be  save  in  that  consummate  vica- 
riousness  of  interest  which  makes  the  goal  of  all  history 
the  justification  for  all  that  now  is  ? 

This  principle  has  its  religious  heightening ;  it  is  even 
the  sum  total  of  what  many  understand  by  religion. 
Thy  will  be  done:  is  not  this  the  act  wherein  the  indi- 
vidual definitely  identifies  his  own  success  with  the 
success  of  the  Highest,  rising  thereby  superior  to  his 
own  fortunes  without  being  dissevered  from  whole- 
hearted historic  action? 

And  it  has  also  its  philosophical  expression.  It  seems 
to  me  that  Royce  has  brought  this  principle  of  altruism 
to  its  philosophic  fulfilment.  It  is  indeed  impossible 
to  seize  fragments  from  a  thought  so  vast  and  organic 
as  his  without  danger  of  misrepresenting  it;  but  I 
must  venture  to  quote  from  a  chapter  wherein,  dealing 
with  our  interminable  struggle  against  the  evils  of  our 
finite  existence,  Royce  summarizes  the  conditions  which 
may  secure  to  us  such  happiness  as  we  can  certainly 
command. 

"  In  all  this  my  own  struggle  with  evil,  wherein  lies 
my  comfort?  I  answer,  my  true  comfort  can  never  lie 
in  my  temporal  attainment  of  my  goal.  For  it  is  my 
first  business,  as  a  moral  agent,  and  as  a  servant  of  God, 
to  set  before  myself  a  goal  that,  in  time,  simply  cannot 

be  attained Wherein,  then,  can  comfort  truly  be 

found  ?  I  reply,  In  the  consciousness,  first,  that  the  ideal 
sorrows  of  our  finitude  are  identically  God's  own  sor- 
rows .  .  .  and  in  the  assurance,  secondly,  that  God's 
fulfilment  in  the  eternal  order  is  to  be  won  through  the 
very  bitterness  of  tribulation  .  .  .  through  this,  my 
tribulation."  And  as  for  the  less  noble  ills  that  "seem 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  499 

not  to  have,  for  our  present  consciousness,  any  ideal 
meaning  .  .  .  Our  comfort  here  lies  in  knowing  that 
in  all  this  life  ideals  are  sought,  with  incompleteness 
and  with  sorrow,  but  with  the  assurance  of  the  divine 
triumph  in  Eternity  lighting  up  the  whole."  l 

Thus  to  conceive  my  finite  experience  sub  specie 
ceternitatis  is  not  merely  an  emancipation  from  evil,  it 
is  our  essential  and  positive  achievement  of  happiness. 
It  is  the  experience  in  which  "  our  temporal  life  is  even 
now  the  expression  of  the  eternal  triumph  " ;  and  through 
this  act  of  knowing  I  become  an  actual  partaker  in  that 
triumph.  It  is  this  conception  of  the  eternal  which 
makes  a  vicarious  happiness  possible :  and  it  is  vicarious, 
in  so  far  as  my  present  relation  to  that  will  is  one  of 
loyalty  primarily,  not  of  comprehension;  my  present 
attitude  to  fortune,  one  of  resignation,  not  of  control. 
What  this  eternal  triumph  is,  I  do  not  know;  I  only 
know  that  it  is  real:  and  this,  for  Royce,  is  enough. 
"  Strengthened  by  that  knowledge,  we  can  win  the  most 
enduring  of  temporal  joys,  the  consciousness  that  makes 
us  delight  to  share  the  world's  grave  glories  and  to  take 
part  in  its  divine  sorrows." 

V 

These  truths  do  deeply  touch  the  original  springs  of 
human  happiness.  Such  knowledge  of  the  eternal  Pur- 
pose and  loyalty  to  it  must  be  a  great  part  of  any  real 
welfare.  Vicariousness  of  mind  is  wholly  necessary  to 
happiness ;  ensuring  the  widest  scope  of  that  idea-world 
whereby  all  things  must  be  appreciated  that  are  appre- 
ciated. Have  we  not  already  found  in  altruism  the 

1  The  World  and  the  Individual,  vol.  ii,  pp.  407  ff. 


500  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

largest  possible  contribution  to  personal  welfare ; 1  and 
in  companionship  the  experience  which  can  transmute 
all  pain  ?2  Vicariousness  is  wholly  necessary ;  and  were 
it  not  for  that  fatal  separation  from  one's  own  immedi- 
ate concerns,  might  be  regarded  as  sufficient.  But  the 
vicarious  principle  cannot  heal  this  division  ;  hence  it  is 
not  final. 

For  vicarious  happiness  is,  by  its  nature,  independent 
(or  relatively  independent)  of  my  personal  success  in 
any  present  undertaking.  So  far  from  supplying  an 
adequate  motive  for  treating  this  present  business  as  of 
infinite  importance,  it  is  essentially  a  refuge  from  the 
contingencies  of  that  business.  It  does  not  remove  nor 
evade  misfortune  ;  but  when  misfortune  comes,  it  relieves 
it  by  distributing  the  shock  through  the  whole  range  of 
my  vicarious  interests.  He  who  loves  the  whole  has 
resources  beyond  himself  in  his  own  evil  hour.  But 
the  question  of  that  particular  evil  is  not  met ;  one  is 
simply  lifted  above  it  or  borne  through  it  by  his  attach- 
ment in  the  absolute.  One  is  consoled,  but  not  restored 
to  confidence  in  the  worth  of  his  own  action.  Our  prin- 
ciple has  no  launching  powers ;  its  attitude  toward  evil 
and  misfortune  is  essentially  passive  :  it  is  always  one  of 
comfort  after  the  fact,  never  of  adoption  before  the  fact. 

But  surely  we  have  not  attained  human  manhood 
with  reference  to  the  ills  of  our  destiny  until  we  can  go 
to  meet  them,  instead  of  waiting  in  philosophic  discom- 
fort for  them  to  surprise  us.  He  whose  deed  is  dragged 
from  him  is  not  owner  of  that  deed ;  and  he  who  must 
pass  out  of  his  own  conscious  will  for  comfort,  cannot 
wholly  return  to  this  same  conscious  will  for  the  coun- 

1  Chapter  xi,  p.  136.  2  Chapter  xv,  p.  222  ff. 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  601 

sels  of  positive  action.  No  man,  I  venture  to  say,  can 
be  wholly  happy  in  defeat  unless  he  foreknows  and 
goes  to  it,  not  as  Napoleon  to  his  island,  but  as  Socrates 
to  his  death.  Not  resignation,  but  renunciation,  is 
the  greatest  and  last  of  the  virtues  in  presence  of  the 
ultimate  enemies  of  our  fortunes.  And  not  blank  renun- 
ciation, but  renunciation  made  significant  by  some 
consciously  known  purpose  which  in  the  midst  of  defeat 
is  not  defeated.  Only  thus  can  the  will  return  whole- 
heartedly to  the  charge.  No  vicarious  or  indirect 
mediation  can  supply  me  with  the  necessary  integrity 
of  interest  in  this  present  undertaking.  In  short,  no' 
man  can  be  happy,  nor  ought  to  be,  without  a  conscious 
control  of  his  own  fortune ;  without  a  fundamental  and 
necessary  success  of  his  own  in  dealing  with  the  world 
of  objects  beyond  him. 

This  is  a  hard  saying:  for  it  demands  what  both 
altruism  and  stoicism  have  assumed  to  be  impossible,  a 
power  over  facts  even  in  the  midst  of  our  finite  circum- 
stances. Nevertheless,  I  believe  that  we  must  either 
make  this  requirement,  or  abandon  the  attempt  to  find 
happiness  in  the  world.  This  latter  course  is  always 
open  to  us,  and  is  virtually  adopted  by  most ;  but  at  a 
greater  cost  than  they  think,  that  of  relinquishing  the 
hold  of  religion  upon  human  history. 

Altruism,  not  less  than  stoicism,  leaves  me  unsure  of 
the  worth  of  my  present  act  and  purpose :  that  present 
act  is  liable  to  be  defeated  by  an  event,  which  even 
though  it  reveal  to  me  the  will  of  God  or  my  own 
deeper  will,  must  hold  over  my  undertaking  a  shadow 
of  invalidity.  I  can  never  taste  the  quality  of  genuine 
happiness,  namely,  perfect  belief  in  and  devotion  to 


502  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

my  own  undertaking.  I  am  a  necessarily  diminished 
and  divided  being :  I  am  to  act,  but  another  than  I  is 
to  succeed.  And  not  less  than  in  the  case  of  stoicism 
does  such  an  attitude  impose  upon  myself  and  upon  my 
world,  in  time,  an  air  of  unreality.  For  while  God  and 
Nature  first  become  real  to  me  because  they  determine 
me ;  they  can  only  remain  real,  in  so  far  as  I  also  can 
successfully  determine  them,  and  as  I  intend.  Men's 
mental  horizons  always  tend  to  shrink  beneath  what 
their  passive  experience  shows  them  as  real ;  they 
tend  to  coincidence  with  the  sphere  of  their  conscious 
efficiency.  Religions  of  nature  and  of  humanity  appeal 
to  men  chiefly  because  here  are  purposes  whose  mean- 
ing we  think  we  can  share,  and  effectively  promote, 
even  as  we  intend.  The  earth  is  real  to  me  in  part 
because  it  resists  me ;  in  part  because  it  yields  to  me 
and  I  can  recognize  my  own  works  in  solid  rock.  Were 
there  no  sure  succeeding  there,  earth  and  I  would  speed- 
ily become  unreal  to  each  other.  Reality  must  be 
defined  as  the  region  wherein  I  can  identify  my  happi- 
ness with  my  own  success  ;  not  alone  with  the  success 
of  another. 

Indeed,  I  can  only  know  and  understand  an  Other  in 
so  far  as  our  object-worlds,  and  our  objective  goods  like- 
wise, are  the  same :  hence,  in  whatever  sense  God  is  to 
triumph  in  history,  in  that  same  sense  must  I  triumph 
also.  In  some  degree,  as  we  have  seen,  every  soul  of 
us  knows  the  whole,  and  feels  in  his  own  limbs  the  thud 
and  the  impulse  of  the  engines  of  reality :  it  must  be 
possible,  then,  for  our  wills,  to  the  same  degree,  to  con- 
tain the  will  of  the  universe.  We  must  be  able  to  reach 
a  kind  of  maturity  in  respect  to  God  himself,  in  which 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  503 

we  are  ready  to  assume  the  burden  not  only  of  omnis- 
cience —  as  we  continually  do  —  but  also  of  omnipo- 
tence, with  regard  to  some  fragment,  however  minute,  of 
the  historical  work  of  the  universe.  In  such  a  moment 
the  act  which  we  should  utter  would  be  known  as  a  com- 
pletely real  act ;  and  since  we  cannot  separate  our  own 
reality  from  the  reality  either  of  our  objects,  or  of  our 
deeds  —  we  too  become  for  the  first  time  completely 
real. 

/  To  require  this  of  the  world  is  to  require  what  we 
may  call  the  prophetic  consciousness.  By  the  pro- 
phetic consciousness  I  do  not  mean  a  knowledge  that 
something  is  to  happen  in  the  future,  accomplished  by 
forces  beyond  myself:  I  mean  a  knowledge  that  this 
ftct  of  mine  which  I  now  utter  is  to  succeed  and  hold 
its  place  in  history.  It  is  an  assurance  of  the  future 
and  of  all  time  as  determined  by  my  own  individual 
will,  embodied  in  my  present  action.  It  is  a  power 
which  knows  itself  to  be  such,  and  justly  measures  its 
own  scope.  I  do  not  say  as  yet  that  an  assurance  like 
this  is  possible  ;  still  less  that  it  has  ever  been  attained  : 
I  say  only  that  it  is  necessary  for  happiness  —  that  with- 
out it  this  region  of  historical  fact  must  stand  condemned 
as  outside  the  sphere  of  either  justice  or  reality.  Apart 
from  the  possibility  of  prophetic  consciousness,  this 
region  must  be  to  our  wills  a  "  realm  of  chance "  — 
just  such  a  realm  as  Hegel  and  Royce  and  Howison 
agree  with  James  in  accepting  —  impenetrable  to  the 
Spirit,  and  ultimately  repellent  to  the  Spirit ;  wherein, 
therefore,  the  Spirit  can  never  be  wholly  naturalized 
and  at  one  with  its  own  existence. 


504  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

VI 

If  this  demand  for  prophetic  consciousness  seems 
preposterous,  it  is  chiefly,  I  must  think,  because  our 
various  philosophies  of  life  have  persuaded  us  of  its 
impossibility ;  and  we  will  be  reconciled,  even  though 
half-heartedly,  with  what  is  attainable  —  a  bowing- 
down  which  is  the  modern  form  of  devil  worship. 
Further,  the  love  of  power,  of  which  this  prophetic 
consciousness  is  but  a  sublimation,  is  associated  in 
theory  with  the  ruthless,  the  violent,  the  competitive, 
the  relentlessly  self-assertive,  as  in  the  philosophies 
of  Hobbes  and  Nietzsche.  Only  a  few  can  command 
success  of  this  sort ;  and  that  at  such  moral  cost  that 
we  repudiate  the  ideal,  and  seek  our  happiness  in  some 
other  faculty.  But  may  it  not  be  that  this  instinctive 
love  of  power  which  is  in  every  human  creature  needs 
only  to  be  raised  to  the  dignity  of  prophecy  to  lose 
both  its  cruelty  and  its  incredibility?  May  it  not  be 
that  these  philosophers  of  the  Wille  zur  Macht  have 
but  labored  to  preserve  to  us  our  confidence  in  the  chief 
moral  element  of  our  nature  ? 

For  when  we  consider  the  facts  of  life,  such  an  expe- 
rience as  this,  a  knowledge  of  necessary  historic  com- 
mand of  fortune,  is  neither  hypothetical  nor  unknown, 
nor  yet  confined  to  the  careers  of  violence.  Moments 
of  world-shaping  prophecy  are  indeed  rare  enough  in  the 
records,  even  if  the  records  are  to  be  believed.  And 
yet  it  is  not  meaningless  that  men  whom  we  otherwise 
respect  have,  in  certain  critical  passes  of  their  experi- 
ence, claimed  this  for  themselves  ;  they  have  left  it  at 
least  ideally  open  to  our  attainment.  Do  we  not  recall 


THE   PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  605 

utterances  of  Ptah  Hotep,  of  Socrates,  of  Alexander, 
of  Dante,  Spinoza,  Montesquieu,  Hugo,  Froebel,  Pitt. 
Browning,  Disraeli,  sent  out  in  the  teeth  of  hostile  cir- 
cumstances, asserting  a  sense  of  invincibleness  in  their 
historic  position  ?  There  are  false  prophets  also ;  but 
we  ask  only  whether  there  be  any  true  ones.  And  we 
have  not  to  depend  on  the  reports,  perhaps  the  boasts, 
of  others'  experiences.  We  may  assume  that  whenever 
a  supreme  type  of  experience  is  possible  to  human 
nature,  it  will  have  numerous  analogues  and  anticipa- 
tions scattered  throughout  our  common  experiences. 
If  the  prophetic  consciousness  is  possible,  it  will  not  be 
left  without  a  witness  here. 

I  am  inclined  to  think,  as  I  examine  our  ordinary 
commerce  with  physical  facts  and  with  social  partic- 
ulars such  as  history  is  made  of,  that  our  consciousness 
of  command  is  the  rule,  while  tentativeness  and  defeat 
are  the  exceptions.  Skill  is  possible  in  a  thousand 
j  ways  ;  and  skill  is  an  experimental  dealing  with  facts 
1  which  has  reached  the  point  of  assurance.  Active  life, 
like  the  life  of  thought,  is  built  on  the  basis  of  concrete 
certainty.  Our  conscious  enterprise  is  three-fourths 
experiment ;  but  it  steps  out  from  a  vast  substratum  of 
the  indubitable.  If  our  bodily  existence  is  itself  a 
kind  of  instantaneous  and  perfect  command  over  a 
limited  range  of  physical  nature,  our  active  existence 
has  a  like  range  of  primitive  certainty  which  defines  the 
level  of  the  species.  A  man  is  he  who  can  infallibly 
exercise  or  acquire  a  certain  minimum  of  assured  power 
over  facts,  in  work  and  speech  and  habit;  man  is 
defined  by  a  certain  high  level  of  assumable  power. 
The  child  must  be  taught  to  doubt,  not  to  be  confident 


506  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

of  success ;  the  proud  prophetic  attitude  is  the  native 
air  of  our  existence,  and  can  no  more  be  wholly  can- 
celled by  our  numerous  defeats  than  can  our  conscious- 
ness of  deity. 

But  our  more  significant  prophetic  experiences  lie  on 
the  other  side  of  experiment ;  they  come  to  us  as  skill 
assimilates  itself  to  nature,  and  imitates  the  fundamen- 
tal certainty  with  which  it  fuses.  A  well-defined  and 
limited  consciousness  of  power  seems  to  me  to  be  the 
essential  fruit  of  mature  self-knowledge.  May  not  an 
orator  command  his  audience,  and  know  that  he  must 
do  so,  as  simply  as  a  child  commands  the  ear  of  a  parent? 
In  such  powers  we  all  share.  For  all  language,  and  all 
expression  of  every  kind,  is  just  such  a  process  of  mak- 
ing historic  and  actual  certain  experiences  which  at  first 
are  but  private  meanings  of  my  own :  and  in  so  far  as 
I  can  be  sure  that  these  private  meanings  are  indeed 
universally  valid,  I  may  undertake  with  certainty  to 
utter  them.  If  I  know,  as  I  do,  that  my  own  experi- 
ence of  physical  nature  is  an  experience  universal  and 
sharable,  it  may  be  that  beliefs,  emotions,  reasonings, 
principles,  should  appear  to  me  with  a  like  universality. 
And  it  is  not  uncommon  to  see  men  so  convinced  of  this 
necessary  acceptance  of  their  idea  that  they  are  willing 
to  persist  in  uttering  it  in  face  of  universal  repudiation, 
sure  at  the  same  time  that  they  know  their  fellows 
better  than  they  know  themselves.  Often  we  find  our 
poets  dealing  in  just  such  generous  prophetic  insistence 
with  our  common  lives,  knowing  that  what  they  express 
is  no  private  sentiment,  but  the  typical  and  universal 
sense  of  man.  We  remember,  among  others,  the 
"Non  omnis  moriar"  of  Horace;  and  of  Shakespeare, 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  507 

"  Yet  do  thy  worst,  old  Time."     And  this  of  Francis 
Thompson, 

"  I  hang  'mid  men  my  needless  bead, 
And  my  fruit  is  dreams,  as  theirs  is  bread  : 
The  goodly  men  and  the  sun-hazed  sleeper 
Time  shall  reap;  but  after  the  reaper 
The  world  shall  glean  of  me,  me  the  sleeper  ! " 

The  more  visible  modes  of  prophecy,  however,  appear 
in  those  regions  of  experience  where  human  happiness 
reaches  its  common  height,  namely  in  the  more  intimate 
personal  relationships.  No  one  is  lover  who  does  not 
prophesy :  and  this  prophecy  reaches  its  summit  in 
the  most  presumptuous  of  all  commands,  "  Follow  me." 
In  all  friendship  we  say  we  have  the  debt  of  loyalty, 
and  find  our  happiness  in  loyalty :  yet  loyalty  is  that 
one  element  of  mutual  living  which  nothing  but  a 
prophetic  consciousness  can  explain.  Nothing  but  a 
prophetic  consciousness,  a  foreknowledge  of  the  power 
of  success  in  this  difficult  relationship,  can  justify  the 
vows  of  marriage  as  they  have  been  made :  and  any  less 
binding  vow  is  so  much  less  than  moral.  Love  itself 
seems  to  have  such  prophetic  bearings,  whether  truly 
or  falsely;  it  summarizes  and  discounts  all  obstacles 
in  advance,  and  instates  itself  in  unquestioning  com- 
mand of  life  and  body.  Love  at  least  must  postulate 
prophecy. 

Our  prophetic  experiences  begin  in  our  immediate 
personal  context.  Our  first  acquired  and  conscious 
historical  powers  are  powers  over  the  free  agents  of 
history  —  our  fellow  persons.  From  this  focus  our 
prophetic  range  spreads  itself  outward,  largely  through 
the  conductive  medium  of  men  and  institutions,  until  it 
reaches  and  claims  the  services  of  all  matter.  Prophecy 


508  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

accepts  and  stands  upon  all  these  acquired  and  distrib- 
uted powers,  such  as  they  are,  and  fuses  them  into  single 
deeds,  addressed  to  particular  situations,  deeds  which 
know  their  place  and  their  meaning,  and  which  shake 
themselves  free  from  the  contingencies  of  the  progres- 
sive experiments  of  mankind,  for  the  purposes  of  their 
own  moment. 

Moreover,  the  consciousness  of  historic  validity  is  not 
limited  to  such  single  deeds  as  these.  The  form  of 
command,  as  power  perfects  itself,  tends  to  become 
non-assertive,  silent,  and  immediate,  conveyed  with  the 
temper  of  attitude  and  action :  and  as  personality 
acquires  this  more  perfect  poise,  the  exercise  of  pro- 
phetic power  may  become  continuous,  not  simply  con- 
centrated in  climactic  performances.  The  effect  of  such 
silent  and  continuous  command  may  be  nothing  more 
than  this,  that  things  grow  in  its  presence.  But  this, 
if  we  have  not  been  mistaken,  is  what  chiefly  happens 
in  the  presence  of  God.  This  also  is  historical  action. 

VII 

These  are  the  common  foundations  of  our  action. 
And  if  there  be  any  such  thing  as  a  more  total  and 
significant  prophecy  than  these,  it  will  have  the  same 
structure  as  they :  it  will  be  the  whole  of  which  our 
various  experiments  are  parts.  Happiness  may  be  iden- 
tified with  success  in  the  utterance,  not  of  fragmentary 
meanings  here  and  there,  but  of  some  total  meaning ; 
the  indelible  historic  expression  of  a  self.  It  cannot 
fail  to  be  at  some  high  cost  that  a  man  may  come  to 
recognize  his  own  total  and  universal  meaning,  and 
impose  that  upon  the  course  of  things.  Some  complete 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  609 

commitment  to  that  aim  might  well  be  necessary.  And 
such  commitment  will  not  leave  him  to  suffer  that  pain 
alone  which  may  reach  him  by  diffusion;  it  will  put 
upon  him  the  necessity  of  courting  pain,  even  of  creat- 
ing pain  for  others  where  none  now  exists,  rousing 
them  from  their  ease  and  exciting  their  wrath.  It  is 
well  for  us  that  every  man  has  his  quantum  of  the 
belligerent  spirit ;  for  it  is  as  necessary  to  our  happiness 
to  have  found  and  defined  our  proper  antagonism  as  to 
have  found  and  defined  our  proper  love.  Enthusiasm1 
can  exist  on  no  other  terms ;  for  enthusiasm  is  not  energy 
merely,  but  energy  conscious  of  a  potential  difference. 
When  we  have  caught  the  spirit  of  this  kind  of  detach- 
ment we  discover  that  the  outer  dimension  of  ourself 
varies  with  the  greatness  of  the  thing  we  are  over 
against  quite  as  truly  as  with  the  greatness  of  the  thing 
allied  to  us.  We  take  a  fierce  joy  in  the  power  to  per- 
fect that  detachment  by  simplification,  by  renunciation, 
demonstrating  to  ourselves  that  we  have  the  power  to 
renounce,  to  deny,  to  oppose  —  to  send  our  plowshare 
deep,  so  that  when  it  moves,  as  it  must,  a  huge  segment 
of  sluggish,  inert  earth  will  be  disgruntled  and  dis- 
placed. We  find  re-entering  into  our  souls  those  lost  ^(0p<A 
virtues  of  war  and  asceticism  —  virtues  which  can  \v\A 
never  be  artificially  fostered  or  reclaimed. 

In  such  a  temper  as  this  are  strangely  combined  the 
self-sufficiency  of  the  stoic,  the  universality  of  the 
altruist,  and  that  righteous  love  of  power  which  our 
own  age  at  once  celebrates,  fears,  and  decries.  The 
prophet  is  the  realization  of  all  these  human  motives ; 
and  it  is  he  whom  all  these  have  in  mind  as  the  super- 
man, who  is  also  the  sage,  and  the  man  wholly  happy 


510  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

in  his  historic  context.  Is  it  not  he  whom  Maeterlinck 
has  in  mind,  even  while  he  praises  the  stoic  virtues? 
"  To  those  round  about  us  there  happen  incessant  and 
countless  adventures,  whereof  every  one,  it  would  seem, 
contains  a  germ  of  heroism;  but  the  adventure  passes 
away,  and  heroic  deed  is  there  none.  But  when  Jesus 
Christ  met  the  Samaritan,  met  a  few  children,  an  adul- 
terous woman,  then  did  humanity  rise  three  times  in 
succession  to  the  level  of  God."  This  is  that  "  con- 
sciousness of  self"  which  "  with  the  greatest  of  men 
implies  consciousness  up  to  a  point  of  their  star  or  their 
destiny  "  ;  and  not  alone  because  "  they  know  in  advance 
how  events  will  be  received  in  their  soul,"  but  because 
iii  addition  to  this  they  also  know  what  they  will  do 
with  these  events,  and  what  stamp  history  will  carry  as 
it  falls  back  from  that  encounter. 

Shall  we  not  acknowledge,  then,  that  the  prophetic 
consciousness  is  a  wholly  credible  experience,  abun- 
dantly indicated  in  the  ideals  as  well  as  in  the  instincts 
of  men  as  the  concrete  conception  of  happiness?  And 
if  we  regard  it  as  necessary  for  happiness,  we  do  not 
thereby  wholly  condemn  our  experience  even  as  we  find 
it.  It  is  certainly  not  necessary  for  happiness  that 
every  undertaking  should  succeed,  that  there  should  be 
no  failures :  it  is  only  necessary  that  as  our  buffeted  lives 
labor  for  the  most  part  between  our  two  great  refuges 
— stoicism  and  vicarious  satisfaction  —  it  should  still 
remain  open  to  us  to  believe  that  these  lives  may  have 
some  total  historic  meaning,  and  that  this  meaning  can, 
through  whatever  discipline  or  observance,  be  brought 
to  consciousness  and  valid  expression.  If  we  can  believe 
this,  history  can  never  become  wholly  alien  to  us. 


THE  PROPHETIC   CONSCIOUSNESS  511 

But  how  and  when  does  the  hour  of  such  total 
prophecy  arrive  ?  Is  there  to  be  a  moment  when  not 
alone  the  hero,  the  patriot,  the  sage,  but  the  simple 
man  of  quiet  life  and  plain  speech,  may  lay  aside  the 
attitude  of  humility,  cease  to  admit  his  possible  failure, 
and  take  control  of  the  history  which  at  that  moment 
is  enacting  itself  in  his  presence  ?  Must  there  come  to 
every  one  an  hour  when  the  connection  between  the  suc- 
cess of  his  cause  in  the  world  and  the  success  of  his  own 
deed  lies  clear  before  him,  turning  vicariousness  into 
cowardice ;  when  he  knows  beyond  doubt  that  the  arc 
of  the  destiny  of  that  idea  must  now  coincide  with  the 
swing  of  his  own  arm  ?  In  what  form  does  prophecy  ar- 
rive ?  And  how  is  the  prophetic  consciousness  possible  ? 

VIII 

My  answer  is  that  the  prophetic  consciousness  is 
possible  in  the  same  way  that  reflexion  is  possible,  in  the 
same  way  that  a  total  present  judgment  upon  the  world 
is  possible.  The  prophet  must  know  himself;  and  he 
must  know  his  world,  not  in  detail  but  in  so  far  as  it  is 
relevant  to  his  purpose :  such  knowledge  as  this  must 
come  to  him  through  his  relation  to  the  absolute.  The 
'prophet  is  but  the  mystic  in  control  of  the  forces  of 
history,  declaring  their  necessary  outcome :  the  mystic 
in  action  is  the  prophet.  In  the  prophet,  the  cognitive 
certainty  of  the  mystic  becomes  historic  and  particular ; 
and  this  is  the  necessary  destiny  of  that  certainty :  mystic 
experience  must  complete  itself  in  the  prophetic  con- 
sciousness. The  lightning  of  Zeus  is  not  released  until 
already  it  is  f orefated  to  strike  the  earth ;  in  this  trans- 
action heaven  and  earth  must  break  away  together.  So 


512  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

whatever  certainty  the  mystic  acquires  means  and  fore- 
tells a  positive  overcoming  of  the  world :  he  can  only  keep 
his  certainty  by  making  it  visible  to  himself  in  historic 
accomplishment.  Prophetic  power  is  the  final  evidence 
to  each  individual  that  he  is  right  and  real ;  it  is  his 
assurance  of  salvation  ;  it  is  his  share  of  divinity ;  it  is 
his  anticipation  of  all  attainment.  Hence  it  is  that  the 
greater  mystics  have  been  great  founders,  great  agita- 
tors, and  have  if  not  a  heavenly  immortality  yet  unques- 
tionably a  mundane  immortality.  There  are  no  deeds 
more  permanent  than  those  of  Buddha,  of  Mohammed, 
of  Jesus.  And  innumerable  lesser  deeds  of  equal 
validity  have  completed  the  substance  of  these  mighty 
frames.  The  deeds  of  the  mystics  constitute  the  hard 
parts  of  history ;  the  rest  has  its  day  and  passes. 

The  love  of  history  has  not  usually  been  reckoned 
among  the  virtues  of  the  mystic.  The  mystic  is  pre- 
cisely the  timeless  and  unhistorical  being,  even  in  the 
midst  of  his  creations.  It  is  no  concern  of  the  artist 
that  he  produces  to-day  or  to-morrow,  for  this  company 
or  for  that.  I  admit  the  paradox.  The  carelessness 
of  time  is  the  chief  evidence  of  the  artist's  historic 
security.  If  he  is  a  true  creator  he  addresses  history 
itself,  with  all  its  accidents.  Socrates  does  not  write, 
nor  does  Spinoza  publish  his  chief  work ;  but  each  in 
his  own  way  cares  sacredly  for  the  viability  of  the  link 
between  himself  and  the  concrete  future. 

Eetreat  from  history  is  the  mystic's  temptation. 
And  he  who  dwells  in  the  universal  alone  'becomes 
false ;  the  unhistorical  mystic  is  a  liar :  he  has  hidden 
himself  from  the  truth  which  is  only  in  the  fact.  But 
the  falsity  of  mysticism  is  the  beginning  of  its  end. 


THE  PROPHETIC    CONSCIOUSNESS  513 

The  next  swing  of  the  alternation  of  mind  brings  the 
scientist,  who  is  the  mystic  confronting  the  fact  with 
his  absolute.  Objectivity  of  mind  is  the  most  germane 
fruit  of  religion  ;  and  science  becomes  possible  only 
through  long  discipline  of  worship.  Man  cannot  at 
first  bear  a  perfect  contact  with  nature,  nor  conceive  a 
wholly  physical  causality  ;  none  of  his  early  hardships 
give  him  the  sense  of  fact;  his  fancies  stand  between 
him  and  the  possibility  of  a  fully  physical  experience. 
It  is  only  the  developed  spirit  that  can  bear  the  fact  in 
its  nakedness.  It  is  only  the  modern  mind  that  can 
define  causality.  Truthfulness  is  a  wholly  modern 
virtue,  born  with  the  Eenaissance  and  its  respect  for 
the  objective  event.  And  the  Renaissance  is  the  medi- 
aeval mind  turned  upon  nature ;  it  is  worship  turning  to 
discover  the  sacredness  of  history.  The  historical 
virtues,  truthfulness  and  economic  integrity,  are  the 
latest  moral  products  of  spiritual  advance,  the  especial 
deposits  of  the  Christian  temper  in  religion. 

And  indeed  it  is  only  the  mystic  who  ought  to  be 
historically  moral ;  for  to  him  alone  can  the  world  as 
it  is,  in  its  very  particulars,  be  sacred.  The  unfriendlj 
shapes  of  fortune  are  the  chief  occasions  for  faith;  onlj 
faith  is  right  in  exposing  itself  to  them  without  reserve  :  ^H\£' 
and  faith  is  but  the  love  of  God,  the  prophetic  conscious- 
ness, confronted  by  the  particulars  of  history.  It  is 
only  the  mystic,  I  say,  who  is  wholly  bound  to  history, 
and  therewith  to  truth  and  honor. 

There  is  such  a  thing  as  losing  one's  soul :  and  that 
is,  rejecting  one's  call  to  prophesy.  For  if  there  be 
any  immortality  beyond  this  present  scheme  of  things, 
it  is  not  in  abstraction  therefrom :  the  destiny  of  our 


514  THE  FEUITS  OF  RELIGION 

own  deeds,  great  and  small,  is  an  integral  part  of  what- 
ever future  there  may  be  for  us.  To  deserve  to  endure 
is  the  only  guarantee  of  enduring.  I  have  no  faith 
in  an  intrinsic  indestructibility  of  the  substance  of 
consciousness.  One  life  is  given  us ;  another  may  be 
acquired.1  Immortality,  I  venture  to  think,  may  be  the 
chief  and  total  object  of  the  prophetic  consciousness. 
But  if  so,  it  must  be  a  consciousness  of  such  command 
of  nature  as  he  only  has  who  can  wholly  accept  nature 
as  it  is ;  of  such  superiority  to  the  catastrophes  of  his- 
tory as  he  only  has  who  can  unreservedly  live  out  into 
this  present  history,  knowing  it,  even  to  its  last  hard 
fact,  as  his  sphere  of  divine  control. 

Professor  C.  A.  Bennett  calls  my  attention  to  a 
remark  by  Edmund  Gosse  in  an  essay  on  Malherbe 
to  the  effect  that  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  it  was  the  fashion  for  all  poets  to  claim  im- 
mortality. When  prophecy  becomes  a  convention,  the 
virtue  has  leaked  out  of  it;  but  it  was  presumably 
*$ome  original  virtue  that  inspired  the  imitators. 

i  See  on  this  point  Frederic  Palmer,  The  Winning  of  Immortality. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

• 

THE  UNIFYING  OF  HISTORY 

OUR  historic  existence  with  its  immense  contingen- 
cies we  take  for  the  most  part  with  a  certain  poetic 
remoteness :  we  only  half  believe  in  it;  we  hope  well  of 
it  —  that  is  to  say,  we  hope  well  of  the  luck  that  seems 
to  prevail  there.  We  live  still  in  a  semi-savage  dreami- 
ness, incredulous  of  the  distant  contingency,  incredulous 
therefore  of  the  present  moment,  veiled  from  the  actual 
conditions  of  action,  circling  at  planetary  distances  about 
our  own  practical  center.  The  fanciful  is  too  real  to  us, 
the  real  too  fanciful.  The  evil  that  is  in  this  world,  and 
especially  in  this  spirit  of  meaningless  accident  —  the 
luck  which  we  hope  will  be  for  us  good  luck  —  this  evil 
does  not  rouse  us :  it  benumbs  us,  rather,  and  confirms 
our  somnambulism.  This  is  our  ingrained  irresponsi- 
bility, our  original  sin. 

It  is  the  last  fruit  of  religion  to  produce,  or  approxi- 
mate, a  prophetic  consciousness,  that  is  to  say,  a  natural 
historic  consciousness,  wholly  wakened,  literal,  and  real, 
capable  of  seeing  the  divinity  of  its  own  present  fact 
and  acting  upon  it.  It  is  the  work  of  faith  to  face  the 
bulk  and  detailed  circumstance  of  nature,  banish  its 
luck,  remove  its  mountains.  Religion  must  labor  long, 
but  aims  at  last  to  bring  about  such  a  faith,  literal, 
prophetic,  responsible. 

But   we  are   right   in   our   incredulity,,  so   long  as 


516  THE   FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

religion  comes  to  us  only  as  a  psychological  necessity. 
The  conditions  for  prophetic  control  of  fortune  lie 
without  as  well  as  within,  far  out  on  the  borders  of  the 
universe.  Science  and  the  State,  under  the  encourage- 
ment of  faith,  may  banish  luck  gradually  to  these 
borders :  but  from  them,  luck  streams  back  upon  human 
life  —  distributed,  perhaps,  in  its  incidence,  yet  none  the 
less  menacing  and  vast.  Unless  the  original  sources  of 
history,  the  ultimate  arrangements  of  natural  facts,  the 
configurations  of  physical  things  which  set  the  last  limits 
to  the  hopes  of  all  living  beings,  are  already  subject  to 
some  other  control  than  our  own,  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  absolute  certainty  of  historic  action.  I  cannot  hasten 
the  missile  that  has  once  left  my  hand ;  every  workman 
must  leave  his  work  at  last  to  a  world  that  he  can  no 
longer  govern ;  the  whole  race  of  prophets  and  world- 
builders  stands  helpless  in  the  presence  of  a  wider  agency 
whose  name  is  either  Fate  or  Providence.  Without  the 
cooperation  of  an  environment  not  less  than  infinite, 
the  best  prophet  comes  at  last  to  zero — the  worse  because 
of  his  concrete  hopes.  The  mystic  must  give  reason 
for  his  dogma  that  there  is  no  "realm  of  chance  "  ;  that 
beside  the  work  of  God  which  we  have  been  tracing  in 
the  individual  mind,  there  is  a  supplementary  work  of 
God  in  the  world  beyond  the  human  will,  —  there  at  the 
origins  of  the  plot  which  all  events  work  out.  Thus 
the  theory  of  religion  rests  back  upon  cosmology  and 
the  philosophy  of  a  wider  history  for  its  final  justification. 

I  cannot  here  follow  out  into  this  wider  world  the 
question  of  the  right  of  the  religious  consciousness  in  its 
immediate  practical  assurance.  But  at  least  one  principle 


THE   UNIFYING  OF  HISTORY  617 

prevailing  in  that  world  is  already  in  our  hand,  and  I  will 
touch  upon  it  in  closing.  So  far  as  our  own  human 
history  is  concerned — a  small  part,  no  doubt,  of  our  total 
environment  —  we  can  see  that  the  religious  will  tends 
to  create  the  conditions  for  its  own  success.  Note  what 
these  conditions  are. 

It  is  in  our  human  environment,  as  we  said,  that  our 
natural  will-to-command  finds  its  first  successes:  our 
power  extends  from  this  center  outward.  Yet  taking 
the  human  world  as  a  whole,  it  presents  a  problem  to 
prophetic  ambition  not  less  baffling  than  that  of  the 
control  of  nature :  in  fact,  these  two  problems  are  precise 
counterparts  of  one  another.  Dealing  with  the  social 
environment  has  always  the  guidance  and  encouragement 
of  response,  pro  and  con,  which  nature  lacks.  On  the 
other  hand,  dealing  with  nature  has  always  this  element 
of  satisfaction,  that  nature  is  a  single  order,  persistent, 
invariably  faithful  to  its  own  principles  whether  against 
us  or  for  us.  The  obstacles  to  prophetic  confidence  in 
dealing  with  the  human  world  consist  in  the  absence  of 
just  these  qualities.  He  who  intends  to  accomplish 
|  something  permanent  must  appeal  to  an  environment 
'that  treasures  and  faithfully  conserves  values.  The 
fluid  mass  of  free  wills  conserves  nothing,  holds  itself 
bound  to  nothing.  A  world  which  can  promise  to 
conserve  must  itself  be  unitary  and  eternal:  it  must 
have  a  principle  of  persistent  identity  and  reliability 
like  that  of  nature.  To  introduce  into  this  mass  of  free 
individuals  an  order,  unity,  and  inflexibility  of  purpose 
like  that  of  nature  would  indeed  be  something  of  a 
miracle.  Yet  without  this,  the  prophetic  attitude  is  not 
justified :  this,  as  I  see  it,  is  precisely  what  the  prophet 


518  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

must  require.  He  must  find  in  the  current  of  history 
a  unity  corresponding  to  the  unity  of  the  physical 
universe,  or  else  he  must  create  it.  And  what  I  want 
to  point  out  is  that  it  is  just  such  a  conscious  unification 
of  history  that  the  religious  will  spontaneously  tends 
to  bring  about. 

We  can  see  that  the  type  of  power  which  we  have  called 
prophetic,  unlike  that  power  which  Nietzsche  celebrates, 
tends  not  to  compete  with  and  destroy  the  like  power  in 
its  neighbors,  but  rather  to  develop  and  to  propagate  it. 
As  laughter  begets  laughter,  and  courage  courage, 
passing  from  mind  to  mind  and  crystallizing  a  social 
group  or  a  social  world  upon  its  own  principle,  so  does 
the  world-conquering  temper  of  religion  beget  its  like. 
No  human  attitude  is  more  socially  contagious  than  that 
of  worship,  except  the  practical  attitude  toward  facts 
which  comes  out  of  worship :  namely,  enthusiasm  for 
suffering,  conscious  superiority  to  hostile  facts  of  what- 
ever sort  or  magnitude,  knowledge  of  their  absolute 
illusoriness,  so  far  as  they  pretend  finality,  —  in  a  word 
the  practical  certitude  of  the  prophet.  When  religion 
has  thus  acquired  a  clear-sighted  and  thorough  contemp- 
tus  mundi,  religion  begins  to  be  potent  within  this  same 
world  of  facts:  it  was  within  the  scope  of  the  stoic  to 
become  impregnable,  but  the  religious  spirit  finds  itself 
more  than  impregnable,  —  irresistible.  The  prophetic 
attitude  begins  at  once  to  change  facts,  to  make  dif- 
ferences, to  do  work ;  and  its  first  work  is,  as  I  say, 
its  social  contagion :  it  begins  to  crystallize  its  environ- 
ment, that  is,  to  organize  the  social  world  upon  its  own 
principle. 

And  if  this  temper  is  actually  spread  through  the 


THE  UNIFYING  OF  HISTORY  519 

social  world  (not  rising  and  dying  out  like  the  wave  of 
laughter,  but  reaching  the  threshold  of  self-perpetuation), 
something  more  has  happened  than  the  dissemination 
of  a  type  of  will  by  '  social  imitation '  —  namely,  that 
environment  is  created  which  this  same  type  of  will 
requires.  The  human  world  has  taken  on  a  certain 
unity  of  mind  and  purpose ;  for  whatever  may  be  the 
special  field  of  action  of  any  religious  will,  every  such 
will  must  desire  that  unification  of  the  conscious  world 
as  a  necessary  part  of  its  own  purpose.  So  far,  all  have 
common  cause.  Every  prophetic  will  is  something  of 
an  environment  for  every  other ;  as  the  group  widens, 
and  pervades  human  life  with  its  principle,  it  becomes, 
as  an  environment,  more  adequate  to  its  task,  and  may 
reach  complete  adequacy. 

We  may  conceive  some  such  group  as  becoming  fully 
conscious  of  the  nature  and  extent  of  this  task ;  and 
adopting  as  its  own  special  responsibility  the  extension 
of  its  own  unity,  for  the  sake  of  making  this  same  will 
accessible  to  all  men.  It  would  thus  make  it,  so  to  speak, 
its  own  prophecy  that  prophetic  will  shall  be  possible ; 
that  no  human  being  shall  be  obliged  to  let  his  prophetic 
impulses  die  for  lack  of  that  unity  in  the  human  world 
which  must  justify  them.  This,  I  believe,  is  the  essen- 
tial purpose  of  the  religious  institution.  It  is  this 
purpose,  as  I  conceive  it,  which  brings  religion  to  earth 
in  the  form  not  simply  of  a  system  of  truth,  not  simply 
as  a  type  of  personal  experience,  but  in  the  form  which 
religion  everywhere  takes,  that  of  the  positive  historic 
body  with  work  to  perform. 

Positive  religion  in  its  primitive  phases  makes  history 
possible,  cultivating  what  we  might  call  the  tribal  and 


520  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

national  memory.  In  its  more  developed  phases,  it 
tries  to  achieve  a.  more  general,  non-political,  but  none 
the  less  historic  solidarity  among  men.  It  undertakes, 
we  may  say,  to  do  for  the  sporadic  prophetic  impulses 
of  men  what  the  State  does  for  their  sporadic  impulses 
of  justice  and  public  power.  Let  me  develop  this  idea 
a  little. 

As  I  look  over  the  circumstances  of  religious  develop- 
ment, I  observe  that  there  are  four  striking  changes  in 
the  religious  consciousness  which  usually  occur  together: 
as  religion  becomes  ' redemptive'  (that  is,  world-over- 
coming in  one  way  or  another),  it  detaches  itself  from 
the  national  life,  it  begins  a  universal  propaganda,  and 
it  refers  itself  and  its  adherents  to  some  distinctive 
historic  object  or  person  as  the  beginning  of  its  temporal 
undertaking  (and  so,  as  a  special  point  of  irruption  of 
the  divine  into  history).  Thus  Islam  points  to  its  shrine 
and  its  sacred  book ;  the  Buddhist  convert  must  take 
refuge  in  the  Buddha,  as  well  as  in  the  doctrine  and  the 
order ;  Christianity  asks  men  to  regard  its  founder  as 
the  unique  way  to  God.  How  are  we  to  understand 
this  remarkable  concurrence  of  characteristics  at  this 
stage  of  development  ? 

It  is  the  analogy  of  the  State  which  best  helps  me  to 
understand  what  these  things  mean.  The  political 
organization  affords  to  the  individuals  under  it  what 
Bagehot  well  describes  as  a  u  calculable  future."  In 
the  State  I  have  some  prospect  of  a  tangible  immortality. 
I  acquire  property  that  may  affect  in  one  way  or  another 
my  children's  children.  I  promote  laws,  perhaps,  that 
influence  more  or  less  all  lives  to  come  within  the  scope 


THE   UNIFYING  OF  HISTORY  621 

of  that  government.  I  can  do  my  small  part  anywhere 
in  art  or  industry  or  science  with  a  sense  of  worth ; 
because  the  State  is  there  to  give  permanence  to 
the  growing  treasures  of  one  generation  after  another. 
The  State  lends  to  my  deeds  its  own  permanence, 
so  far  as  these  deeds  are  legitimate  and  within  its  own 
province. 

In  the  same  way  the  religious  institution  (I  am 
speaking  now  of  the  ideal,  as  reflection  shows  it  to  me, 
certainly  not  of  the  entire  body  of  instituted  religion 
as  it  now  is)  —  the  religious  institution  seems  to  exist 
to  lend  its  own  permanence  and  immortality  to  the  deeper 
and  wider  prophetic  purposes  of  men.  In  severing  its 
fortunes  from  those  of  the  State,  it  assures  to  the 
individual  his  right  to  live  and  take  part  in  an  infinite 
history,  though  outside  all  States,  and  in  spite  of  the 
defects  of  all  earthly  States.  It  stands  between  the 
creative  individual  will  and  that  unordered,  or  unstably 
ordered,  human  social  mass,  before  whose  free  mobility 
and  passion  that  will  is  indeed  in  a  hopeless  plight. 

Religion  defies  the  clash  and  decay  of  the  political 
attempts  of  men,  whose  mission  in  their  own  sphere  is 
similar;  but  it  is  historic  religion  which  chiefly  renders 
those  political  attempts  hopeful.  Religion  from  primi- 
tive times  the  protector  of  the  stranger,  the  market-place, 
the  truce,  is  the  forerunner  of  international  law  ;  because 
it  alone  can  create  the  international  spirit,  the  inter- 
national obligation ;  it  alone  can  permanently  sustain 
and  ensure  that  spirit.1 

1  By  such  super-nationalism  in  religion,  national  individuality  is  not 
obscured,  but  rather  promoted.  We  require  a  world-religion  just  because 
we  do  not  require,  nor  wish,  a  world  state. 


522  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

It  is  this  function,  as  I  think,  which  the  greater 
religions  have  more  or  less  clearly  perceived.  They 
propose  to  bring  into  human  affairs  that  most  general 
unity,  not  interfering  with  nor  displacing  any  more 
special  undertaking,  without  which  no  such  special 
undertaking — whether  of  art,  or  of  science,  or  of  law  — 
is  worth  while,  being  without  promise  of  permanence. 

We  customarily  think  of  the  religious  institution  as 
a  way  of  arranging  for  the  social  side  of  worship. 
Worship  is  imperfect  unless  when  I  worship,  I  am  joining 
the  race  in  worship.1  Instituted  religion  has  accordingly 
made  worship  public  ;  at  its  best,  it  does  much  to  join 
the  minds  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  in  worship, 
of  all  present  human  worshippers,  and  with  those  of 
the  past  and  of  the  future.  Further,  we  think  of  the 
institution  as  an  educating  body,  or  as  propagating  the 
religious  type  of  mind  by  that  social  imitation  we  were 
speaking  of.  But  we  usually  fail,  as  I  think,  to  see 
what  the  institution  does  to  justify  that  type  of  mind ; 
namely,  that  it  brings  to  the  individual  soul  not  only  its 
moral  ideal,  its  psychological  norm,  but  also  the  kind  of 
world  wherein  such  a  mind  can  alone  rightly  assert  itself. 
It  is  a  unified  and  responsible  world,  one  which  cares 
for  the  individual  in  his  concrete  character,  and  will 
bear  out  his  rightful  will  to  endure,  —  a  human  world 
which  religion  itself  has  made. 

It  is  a  sign  of  the  good  faith  of  the  institution  that 

1  We  have  regarded  worship  in  its  mystical  aspect,  as  a  solitary 
adventure  of  the  soul  :  but  we  have  also  noted  from  time  to  time  that 
before  the  mystic  may  make  his  lonely  flight  to  God,  he  must  assert  as 
fully  as  possible  his  unity  with  his  human  spiritual  context.  Unity  with 
the  Absolute  becomes  significant  in  proportion  as  the  worshipper  is  first 
one  with  the  spirit  of  God  as  already  established  in  the  world. 


THE  UNIFYING  OF  HISTORY  523 

it  brings  to  the  individual,  who  seeks  assurance  of  his 
own  absolute  worth,  its  assertion  of  its  own  power  and 
permanence.  It  encourages  him  to  prophesy,  only  in 
so  far  as  it  itself  is  based  on  prophecy.  It  asserts  its 
own  universal  scope  and  indestructibility  —  the  gates 
of  hell  shall  not  prevail  against  it.  If  this  is  a  true 
assertion,  the  individual  may  always  knit  his  prophetic 
action  to  that.  The  attitude  which  as  a  solitary  being 
he  could  not  rightfully  assume  is  made  possible  to  him 
by  this  external  agency  which  is  throwing  over  all 
history  its  most  general  unity,  bringing  men  everywhere 
to  a  singleness  of  mind  and  a  singleness  of  purpose. 
Through  that  agency,  and  not  otherwise,  he  may  win, 
in  the  language  of  religion,  his  (historic)  salvation,  the 
forgiveness  of  his  ingrained  sin. 

In  our  current  consciousness,  we  feel  little  need  of 
these  external  assurances,  nor  of  the  institution  which 
offers  them.  The  sense  of  sin  grows  foreign  to  us:  the 
suggestion  that  we  any  longer  require  what  our  fathers 
called  salvation  strikes  with  a  note  of  unreality.  We 
feel  ourselves  morally  secure ;  and  historically,  —  as 
secure  as  need  be.  But  when  beneath  this  over-social- 
ized surface  of  consciousness  we  penetrate  to  the  actual 
basis  of  such  certainties  as  we  have,  our  self-respect, 
our  belief  in  human  worth,  our  faith  in  the  soul's 
stability  through  all  catastrophes  of  physical  nature, 
and  in  the  integrity  of  history  —  this  history  of  ours 
—  forever,  we  must  recognize  there  a  mass  of  actual 
deed,  once  for  all  accomplished  under  the  assurances  of 
historic  religion.  A  system  of  deed,  I  might  rather 
say,  organized  about  a  prophetic  purpose  once  planted 


524  THE  FRUITS  OF  RELIGION 

in  history  and  now  perpetually  reproducing  itself  all 
around  us. 

The  work  of  positive  religion  is  largely  silent ;  like 
the  work  of  positive  law,  it  is  as  great  in  what  it 
prevents  as  in  what  it  noisily  accomplishes  —  perhaps 
greater.  But  the  work  is  there,  and  if  we  are  just  we 
shall  acknowledge  it.  Our  confidences  with  regard  to 
history  must  be  built  in  history  as  well  as  in  universal 
thought,  —  in  both  of  these,  welded  together.  Unless 
we  can  discern  at  its  silent  work  in  human  affairs  this 
power,  self-consciously  eternal,  actively  communicating 
its  own  scope  to  the  feeble  deeds,  the  painful  acquire- 
ments, the  values,  the  loves  and  hopes  of  men,  we 
have  no  right  to  such  faith  as  we  habitually  assume. 
And  without  such  faith  there  is  for  us  no  valid  religion. 


EXPLANATORY  NOTES  AND  ESSAYS 


NOTE  ON  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

ris  well  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  subconsciousness  is  not 
in  endowment  but  an  incidental  acquisition,  due  to  strain 
of  voluntary  attention.  It  is  a  by-product  of  determinedly 
self-conscious  life.  No  infant  has  a  subconsciousness:  no 
adult  is  without  one. 

Our  subconsciousness  at  any  time  may  be  roughly 
described  as  that  remainder  of  consciousness  which  persists 
outside  the  sphere  to  which  in  our  various  practical  efforts  we 
deliberately  narrow  our  interest.  And  this  remainder  has  two 
divisions  which  must  be  sharply  distinguished  in  thought, 
though  in  fact  they  blend  into  one  another. 

We  may  define  these  two  divisions  by  their  relation  to  the 
voluntarily  conscious  self :  the  first  is  allied  with  it,  the  sec- 
ond is  more  or  less  hostile  to  it,  or  critical  of  it.  The  former 
part,  the  allied  subconscious,  is  called  subconscious  chiefly  be- 
cause it  is  not  being  thought  o/",  though  it  is  being  thought 
with.  It  contains  the  instincts  that  we  inherit  and  the  habits 
we  form ;  also  the  memories  we  store,  and  all  the  system  of 
ideas  with  which  we  do  our  apperceiving.  It  contains  the 
habits  of  appreciation  we  build  up,  and  the  habits  of  decision 
—  in  short  our  4  character.'  It  is  an  active  organ  in  all  expe- 
rience, and  can  at  any  time  become  an  object  of  reflective 
scrutiny.  Though  many  an  element  of  memory,  of  attitude, 
of  my  controlling  ideas  and  deeper  instincts,  may  evade 
the  grasp  of  my  pointed  attention  at  any  moment,  there  is 
nothing  here  that  is  essentially  inaccessible,  nothing  that  may 
not  become  part  of  the  focus  of  consciousness.  It  is  not 
'  split-off '  from  the  central  stream  of  attention:  its  objects 


528  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

are  the  same  objects,  its  world  is  the  same  world,  with  that 
of  the  artificial  or  central  self.1 

The  other  aspect  of  subconsciousness,  the  critical,  is  the 
part  to  which  the  name  is  more  properly  applied.  It  is  a 
consciousness  of  objects  which  we,  the  artificial  person,  have 
chosen  not  to  be  conscious  of.  It  is  the  unchosen  or  repressed, 
marginal  life  of  the  mind,  maintaining  an  existence  of  protest, 
like  a  sort  of  bad  conscience.  What  our  artificial  efforts 
exclude  from  notice  is  not  utterly  excluded ;  we  are  not  so  free 
as  we  seem  in  the  self  we  make.  It  is  impossible  to  condemn 
to  oblivion  any  small  voice  in  us  without  in  some  measure 
being  conscious  of  that  voice ;  and  especially  if  we  condemn 
on  less  than  full  conviction  we  cannot  help  being  aware  that 
our  condemnation  is  hasty,  and  this  element  of  our  conscious- 
ness remains  in  communication  with  the  excluded  strand,  and 
keeps  it  alive,  as  it  were  surreptitiously. 

Thus  it  is  that  old  habits  of  observation  continue  to  do 
their  work  without  separate  urging.  Things  which  I  have 
once  noticed,  or  collected,  or  otherwise  valued,  I  continue  sub- 
consciously to  take  notice  of,  though  I  may  have  outgrown  the 
interest,  or  may  have  become  ashamed  of  it.  There  is  an 
extraordinary  cunning  and  minuteness  about  this  aspect  of 
subconsciousness.  It  is  the  watch-dog  of  the  mind.  It  may  take 
note  of  time,  observe  faces,  remember  the  numbers  on  houses 
or  bank-bills,  the  names  of  streets,  the  turns  of  stairs,  passing 
shadows,  flitting  expressions  of  the  eye  and  voice :  it  is  faith- 
ful, as  the  photographic  plate  is  faithful,  to  slighter  impres- 
sions than  the  artificial  self  can  discriminate.  For  doubtless 
the  limits  of  voluntary  interest  have  reduced  the  fulness  of 
the  reports  which  our  senses  may  make  to  the  artificial  self. 
Our  eyes  and  e,ars  are  capable  of  far  more  than  we  can  now 
get  from  them ;  the  remainder,  up  to  the  limit  of  their  sensi- 
tivity, may  still  be  kept  in  a  subconscious  record.  But  again 

1  Since  subconsciousness,  as  I  believe,  is  a  division  within  consciousness, 
the  proper  contrast  is  between  the  subconscious  and  the  artificial  self,  not 
between  the  subconscious  and  the  conscious. 


THE  SUBCONSCIOUS  529 

we  must  say  that  this  faithful  and  relatively  mechanical 
observer  in  us  takes  note  of  nothing  that  has  not  at  some 
previous  time  been  important  to  the  self-conscious  mind, 
whether  of  the  individual  or  his  ancestors.  Its  world,  though 
supplementary,  is  still  the  same  world  as  that  of  the  artifi- 
cial self.1 

1  There  is  in  reality,  as  I  have  said,  no  sharp  line  between  the  '  allied 
•ubconsciousiiess '  and  the  '  critical  subconsciousness  '  :  whether  any  given 
experience,  noted  by  these  persistent  habits  of  observation,  becomes  criti- 
cal, or  merges  itself  with  the  allied  « apperceiviug  mass,'  is  a  question 
chiefly  of  the  kind  of  exclusion  which  relegates  that  experience  to  sub- 
consciousness.  It  may  be  an  exclusion  of  antipathy  ;  it  may  be  an  exclu- 
sion of  simple  limitation  of  interest  (in  which  case,  the  subconscious  crit- 
icism amounts  only  to  this,  that  '  These  things  also  ought  to  be  taken 
into  account ')  :  or  again,  it  may  be  an  almost  wholly  passive  exclusion. 
Professor  Angier,  in  commenting  upon  this  note,  makes  this  distinction 
very  clear  and  graphic.  He  writes  :  — 

"  As  I  take  it,  many  of  the  occurrences  of  life  which  apparently  do 
not  impress  explicit  consciousness  at  all,  toward  which  at  any  given  time 
we  react  in  no  accepting  or  repressing  way  whatever,  slide  into  the  sub- 
conscious where  they  find  congenial  connections  and  become  part  of  the 
reservoir  of  what  you  call  the  '  allied  subconsciousness.'  In  traveling,  for 
instance,  I  imagine  that  many  of  the  scenes  through  which  we  go,  which 
never  enter  the  focal  point  of  consciousness,  nevertheless  contribute  richly 
to  the  final  attitude  with  which  our  travels  leave  us ;  and  later,  in  recalling 
these  travels,  they  furnish  a  background  for  our  memory  image  or  for 
our  conversation. 

"Is  there  not  a  difference  between  those  things  which  we  have  "chosen 
not  to  be  conscious  of,"  i.e.,  repressed,  and  those  things  which  have  simply 
not  entered  the  field  of  explicit  choice  at  all  ?  This  seems  to  be  a  real 
distinction.  Those  things  which  do  not  enter  the  field  of  choice,  but 
nevertheless  casually  make  their  impression  on  the  subconscious,  do  not 
necessarily,  perhaps  not  at  all,  constitute  part  of  the  critical  subconscious- 
ness.  To  my  mind  it  is  only  those  things  to  which  we  are  either  instinc- 
tively or  through  deliberation  averse  that  become  our  subconscious  moni- 
tor and  critic. 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  we  meet  two  types  of  personality  based  on  this 
distinction:  one,  the  genial,  tolerant  man  who  impresses  us  as  reeking  with 
a  rich  and  friendly  co-consciousness  which  gives  subtle  color  and  tone 
to  all  his  sayings  and  doings;  and  the  other  one,  whose  helping  co-con- 
seiousness  is  meager,  but  whose  critical  or  antagonistic  co-consciousness 
is  rich." 


530  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

This  protesting  part  of  subconsciousness  has  great  varia- 
tions in  its  volume  and  strength  as  compared  with  the  self- 
conscious  stream  running  along  beside  it.  It  has  its  periods 
of  fulness  and  of  emptiness ;  it  has  its  own  methods  of 
relief,  finding  its  way  back  to  the  central  self.  We  may 
describe  briefly  the  circumstances  that  fill  it  up ;  and  then 
these  methods  of  relief. 

1.  Strenuousness.  Clearly,  whatever  tightens  the  strain 
of  conscious  attention  will  increase  the  burden  of  the  subcon- 
scious. The  natural  materialism  of  determined  action;  the 
stern  selection  for  world-building  purposes  of  fact  having  a 
specified  degree  of  solidity  and  resistance ;  these  make  quick 
work  of  all  trailing  "  clouds  of  glory,"  and  relegate  them  to 
the  subconscious  where  they  maintain  a  ghostly  existence. 
What  men  call  sentiment  has  to  spend  much  of  its  life  in  this 
Coventry:  it  has  little  chance  while  "  business  is  business" 
—  and  probably  ought  to  have  little  chance. 

Insistent  *  reasonableness,'  i.e.,  strident  logical  pose  where 
ideas  are  far  in  advance  of  possible  idea-connections,  richly 
contributes  to  the  subconscious,  and  correspondingly  impov- 
erishes the  artificial  self.  Note  too  that  it  is  the  nature  of 
reasonableness  of  this  sort  to  seem  to  itself  right  and  self- 
sufficient:  the  circle  of  ideas  that  pass  censorship  becomes 
fixed ;  they  make  themselves  a  closed  group.  The  voice  of  the 
excluded  margin  is  timid,  unarmed,  merely  advisory,  at  a 
political  disadvantage.  It  is  easy  for  the  focus  to  become 
tyrannical,  to  refuse  due  representation  to  the  counsels  of  the 
subconscious;  so  that  a  parallel  stream  of  judgment  which 
might  silently  mingle  with  and  modify  the  course  of  decision 
is  cleanly  excluded  and  put  into  hostility.  Thus  the  focal 
center  of  life  hardens,  polishes  its  surface,  and  tends  to 
perpetuate  its  own  quality. 

Severe  mental  concentration  produces  apparent  oblivion  to 
external  happenings ;  but  in  reality  a  division  of  mind  which 
adds  to  the  subconscious.  If  long  continued,  certain  segments 


THE  SUBCONSCIOUS  531 

of  memory  and  of  the  technique  of  common  living  may  be  split 
off,  temporarily  or  permanently. 

Moral  and  religious  strenuosity  has  the  same  result,  and 
particularly  when  one  wages  war  against  an  entire  aspect  or 
conception  of  oneself.  Dr.  Prince's  Miss  Beauchamp  shows 
very  well  a  type  of  zeal  which  must  result  in  highly  charged 
subconsciousness.  As  a  child  "  her  mother  exhibited  a  great 
dislike  to  her.  .  .  .  On  the  other  hand  she  herself  idealized 
her  mother,  bestowing  upon  her  almost  morbid  affection :  and 
believing  that  her  mother's  lack  of  affection  was  due  to  her 
own  imperfections,  she  gave  herself  up  to  introspection,  and 
concluded  that  if  she  could  only  purify  herself  and  make 
herself  worthy,  her  mother's  affection  would  be  given  her."  l 
As  she  comes  under  Dr.  Prince's  observation  "  she  is  possessed 
of  a  conscientiousness  which  at  times  has  proved  embarrassing 
to  her  friends.  It  is  carried  sometimes  to  a  degree  that  may 
be  characterized  as  morbid.  For  instance,  while  in  college 
she  was  the  recipient  of  a  scholarship ;  consequently  she 
considered  it  her  duty,  in  return  for  this  benefit,  so  diligently 
to  apply  herself  to  her  studies  that  it  was  impossible  for 
teacher  or  physician  to  enforce  sufficient  recreation,  or  even 
the  rest  and  hygienic  measures  which  were  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  keep  what  little  health  she  had."  Further  fragments 
from  Dr.  Prince's  notes :  "  morbid  pride  .  .  .  refinement  of 
thought  and  feeling  beyond  the  ordinary  .  .  .  she  took 
everything  intensely  .  .  .  mentally  and  morally  stubborn." 
The  depth  and  coherence  of  Miss  Beauchamp's  subconscious 
life  must  be  attributed  very  largely  to  this  extraordinary  will 
together  with  the  equally  extraordinary  definition  of  its  own 
problem. 

This  is  not  to  condemn  the  strenuous  life ;  on  the  contrary, 
only  through  strenuous  attention  can  the  standard  of  definition 
and  factualness  be  set  to  which  it  is  the  aim  of  all  idea  to 
conform;  I  only  point  out  the  inevitable  incident  of  that 
strain.  Any  action  at  all,  any  dealing  with  things,  is  a  strain 
1  Morton  Prince.  The  Dissociation  of  a  Personality,  ch.  ii. 


532  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

outward,  involves  some  artificial  limitation  of  judgment,  some 
over-influence  of  physical  standards,  and  will  require  compen- 
sation. The  subconscious  is  simply  the  internal  register  of 
the  compensation  required,  and  will  obviously  increase  in 
fulness  with  the  degree  of  free-will  put  behind  the  action. 

2.  Suppression  of  critical  comment.  There  are  various 
ways  and  various  motives  by  which  our  spontaneous  criticism 
of  people  and  things  gets  huddled  out  of  sight,  and  may  be  so 
effectively  suppressed  as  to  become  subconscious.  Thus  we 
incline  to  suppress  se^-criticism  ;  the  self  of  us  which  "  knows 
better"  when  we  want  to  depart  from  common  sense  or 
common  duty,  the  self  to  which  our  moral  gadflies  appeal  when 
they  assume  that  every  man  knows  what  is  right,  and  come 
toward  us  rather  with  indignation  than  with  persuasion  ;  the 
self  which  we  call  conscience  or  mother  wit;  this  self  is 
capable  of  being  suppressed  —  that  is  to  say,  so  systematically 
hushed  that  it  learns  its  place  and  ceases  to  interfere.  In 
such  cases,  our  bad  conscience  does  literally  take  up  its  abode 
in  subconsciousness.  We  suppress  also  criticisms  of  others, 
of  institutions,  opinions,  etc. ;  we  choke  down  dislikes,  wrongs,- 
fears,  doubts,  scruples,  on  the  theory  of  our  artificial  self  when 
it  holds  that  these  negative  feelings  ought  not  to  exist. 
Theoretical  policy,  especially  social  policy,  must  in  the  main 
be  affirmative  ;  succeeding  policy  must  be  blind  to  minor  hin- 
drances ;  health  must  ignore  disease  :  and  these  fair  resolves 
run  much  danger  of  building  up  a  critical  subconsciousness,  pro- 
ducing a  bland  and  false  personality.  One  is  parted  from  the 
truth  of  his  own  aversions.  One  begins  a  regime  of  duplicity, 
and  may  end  by  losing  all  personal  grit  and  valency.  An 
especial  case  of  this  suppression  is  that  of  the  knowledge 
of  guilt  of  a  past  act  which  I  regard  as  unconfessable : 
it  may  be  a  trivial  matter ;  or  it  may  be  a  criminal  record,  a 
character  overcome  and  hidden  from  sight ;  or  it  may  be  no 
moral  thing  at  all,  but  a  physical  or  mental  peculiarity,  or  a 
defect  in  one's  pedigree  or  origin  which,  as  one  thinks,  simply 
must  not  be  known.  Suppressions  of  this  sort  contribute 


THE  SUBCONSCIOUS  533 

richly  to  subconsciousness,  and  incidentally  to  the  clinic  of 
the  psychiatrist. 

3.  Organic  growth.  The  assumption  that  the  artificial 
self  is  sufficient  unto  itself  makes  difficult  the  entrance  of  new 
ideas  into  consciousness,  especially  of  new  attitudes  toward  life 
as  a  whole  such  as  growth  brings.  Whatever  is  new  in  the 
field  of  idea  is  still  weaker,  as  against  the  central  self,  than 
the  usual  marginal  idea;  for  the  most  part  these  incipient 
developments  can  gain  recognition  only  through  the  channels 
of  dream,  imagination ;  they  so  far  gain  the  conscious  ear  as  to 
call  the  mind  away  from  actualities,  from  time  to  time,  to  a 
world  of  vague  but  alluring  phantasms  which  turn  into  nothing 
real.  Hence  it  is  that  adolescence,  which  is  peculiarly  a  time 
of  theory-grasping  as  well  as  of  growth,  is  subject  to  subcon- 
scious accumulations  and  to  dreams,  and  so  to  more  or  less 
disturbing  processes  of  relief.  On  the  other  hand,  these  new 
ideas  have  this  advantage  over  other  types  of  subconscious 
burden  that  they  are  waxing  in  force  rather  than  waning,  and 
are  destined  at  some  time  or  other  to  find  their  way  to  the 
center. 

The  rejoining  of  the  artificial  self  with  the  subconscious 
self  is  an  event  for  which  nature  has  not  failed  to  provide 
certain  instinctive  methods.  For  each  of  these  ways  of  accu- 
mulating there  is  a  way  of  discharging :  I  think  it  is  true 
that  all  of  the  major  rhythms  of  conscious  life  involve  some 
rise  and  fall  in  the  subconscious  pressure.  I  wish  to  point 
out  that  all  of  these  methods  of  relief  involve  finding  an 
object  which  is  common  to  the  conscious  and  the  sub-conscious 
self. 

1.  For  strenuousness  the  natural  remedy  is  a  general  low- 
ering of  activity,  repose.  Wherever  the  strains  of  artificiality 
and  attention  can  be  released,  as  in  privacy  and  the  ease  of 
friendly  intercourse,  the  subconscious  begins  to  find  its  way 
back  to  the  focus.  This  type  of  relief  reaches  its  natural  end 
in  sleep.  In  sleep,  voluntary  attention  is  abolished  ;  the  mind 


534  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

is  acting  on  no  theory  of  the  good,  and  no  theory  of  itself. 
But  in  sleep  it  cannot  be  said  that  consciousness  is  abolished ; 
it  is  rather  the  case  that  consciousness  has  attached  itself  to 
an  object  which  is  common  to  all  interests,  conscious  and  sub- 
conscious, namely,  the  individual  self.  And  by  relating  them- 
selves to  that  object,  without  interference  from  the  theoret- 
ical will,  the  various  strands  of  mental  life  tend  to  resume 
their  natural  relations  to  each  other. 

2.  For  suppression   of  comment  the  natural  remedy  is  a 
generally   heightened    activity,    excitement,    orgy,    passion.1 
Passion  might  almost  be  defined  as  a  rapid  release  of  subcon- 
scious strain  under  heightened  attention.     It  occurs  when  some 
object  in  the  conscious  field  arouses  an  idea  belonging  to  that 
strand  of  the  allied  subconsciousness  which  is  keeping  this 
part  of  the  critical  subconsciousness  alive.     We  commonly 
observe  that  in  anger,  long  suppressed  comment  finds  its  way 
to  the  surface :  criticisms  which  one  had  resolved  never  to 
utter  come  to  the  fore  and  join  in  the  summary  destructive 
flux.     More  accurately  speaking,   anger  is   the  flood  itself, 
the  rapid  synthesis  of  the  disowned  ideas  with  the  idea  which 
has  here  found  its  object.     But  any  agitation  tends  to  enlist 
wider  and  wider  areas  of  mental  resource,  and  so  to  bring 
subconsciousness  into  working  relations  again  with  the  artifi- 
cial self,  just  as  by  aid  of  heat  or  solution  chemical  unions 
may  take  place,  and  equilibria  be  established,  which  other- 
wise would  remain  indefinitely  in  posse.     In  excitement,  one 
passion  makes  opportunity  for  another ;  and  orgy  may  end, 
not  only  in  general  exhaustion,  but  also  in  the  general  harmony 
and  unity  of    the   entire  creature.     Thus,   amusement   and 
recreation  do  their  part  in  relieving  subconscious  pressure. 

3.  What  organic  growth  contributes  to  subconsciousness  is 
a  kind  of  suppressed  comment ;  and  its  natural  relief  is  also 
a  kind  of  passion.     This  passion  occurs  when  the  dreams,  in 

1  There  is,  of  course,  no  strict  one-to-one  correspondence  between 
these  types  of  relief  and  the  types  of  accumulation  of  strain.  Thus 
suppressed  comment  may  also  be  relieved  by  repose,  or  by  change. 


THE  SUBCONSCIOUS  636 

which  the  growing  motive  had  been  finding  vague  expres- 
sion, 'come  real';  i.e.,  when  in  the  waking  world  an  object 
appears  which  at  the  same  time  recalls  and  satisfies  those 
groping  ideas.  This,  of  course,  is  what  happens  in  *  falling 
in  love.' 

4.  But  beside  these  instinctive  methods  of  relief  there  is 
another,  namely  that  of  deliberate  reflection.  Experience  in 
this  matter,  as  in  all  matters,  brings  about  the  possibility  of 
conscious  control  of  the  process  of  reuniting  the  disjoined 
fragments  of  selfhood.  One  learns  to  recognize  in  himself 
the  malaise  of  subconscious  pressure,  and  to  turn  upon  him- 
self with  the  demand,  "  Well,  what  is  the  matter  with  me." 
Such  a  person  is  delivered  from  the  more  drastic  and  physi- 
ological upheavals,  just  so  far  as  his  power  of  self-analysis 
reaches.  If  he  can  find  the  idea  which  commands  both  the 
conscious  and  the  subconscious,  he  can  do  intentionally  what 
nature  does  instinctively.  Thus,  confession  and  self-confes- 
sion relieve  the  strain  of  suppressed  comment,  and  in  such  wise 
that  one  knows  what  has  happened  to  him  —  in  so  far,  with 
better  result  than  by  the  way  of  passion.  The  deliberate 
practice  of  sincerity  and  prizing  of  the  'natural'  self  are 
habits  which  to  some  extent  may  prevent  the  accumulation 
of  rebellious  residues.  Resolute  facing  of  the  fear  or  the 
doubt  which  dogs  one's  peace;  consciously  planned  occa- 
sions for  meeting  and  removing  grounds  of  injury  or  dislike: 
in  all  these  ways,  and  in  many  others,  consciousness  holds 
in  its  own  power  the  methods  of  reunion  with  the  critical 
subconsciousness. 

But  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  complete  displacement  of 
nature  by  art  in  this  matter :  the  squarely  reflective  restora- 
tion of  selfhood  reaches  but  little  way.  It  is  but  a  process  of 
seeking,  or  as  we  might  say,  of  prayer ;  it  cannot  surely  com- 
mand the  reconciling  idea ;  and  even  so,  it  does  not  so  much 
displace  the  natural  methods  of  repose,  excitement,  and  love 
as  it  does  meet  these  half  way,  and  recognize  their  place  in 
the  conscious  system  of  life. 


536  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

It  must  have  become  evident  that  the  subconscious  or  "  sub- 
liminal self  "  is  only  another  name  for  that  natural  self  of  which 
we  have  been  speaking  ;  the  self  which  in  effort  we  lose,  and 
tend  to  harden  a  superficial  crust  against.  Whatever  releases 
subconscious  ideas  into  central  consciousness  does  so  far  relieve 
spiritual  fatigue ;  and  vice  versa,  whatever  relieves  this  fatigue 
does  at  the  same  time  rejoin  these  two  partially  divided  aspects 
of  conscious  life.  It  will  therefore  be  possible  —  though  of 
no  great  advantage  —  to  express  the  meaning  of  worship  in 
term  of  this  relation  between  subconsciousness  and  the  rest 
of  consciousness. 

Characteristic  of  worship  is  the  necessary  place  in  it  of  the 
method  of  deliberate  reflection  ;  this  constitutes  the  active  part 
of  worship,  or  prayer.  And  in  the  passive  side  of  worship, 
the  mystic  experience  itself,  we  find  qualities  which  resemble 
those  of  all  the  4  natural '  modes  of  recovery,  —  rest,  excitement 
and  love :  worship  is  a  natural  synthesis  of  all  of  these ;  the 
elevation  of  the  mystic  is  a  state  at  once  of  passion  and  of  peace. 
This  might  be  inferred  apriori  from  the  fact  that  the  idea  of 
God  is  one  to  which  no  item  of  consciousness,  whether  split 
off  or  not,  can  get  out  of  relation  ;  it  is  an  idea  which 
belongs  permanently  to  that  self  which  stands  prior  to  the 
divergence  between  the  artificial  and  the  subconscious. 

The  religious  ecstasy  or  orgy  is  a  product  of  religious  spe- 
cialization. That  is  to  say,  worship  ideally  speaking  is  capable 
of  fulfilling  all  the  functions  of  the  other  means  of  re-integra- 
ting selfhood,  whether  of  love,  or  of  amusement,  or  of  sleep 
itself  (as  witness  the  exploits  in  comparative  sleeplessness 
of  Madame  Guy  on,  of  Philip  of  Alcantara,  and  of  many 
another)  :  and  if  one  must,  or  will,  confine  himself  to  this  one 
method  of  spiritual  recovery,  mystic  ecstasy  is  quite  normal. 
We  avoid  it,  and  on  the  whole  prefer  to  avoid  it,  by  a  differ- 
entiation of  worship  in  which  our  mystic  experience  is  diffused 
among  the  several  more  instinctive  rhythms.  I  do  not  doubt 
that  the  distrust  shown  by  certain  of  the  stricter  sects  toward 
amusements,  especially  toward  dance  and  the  theater,  is  due 


THE  SUBCONSCIOUS  537 

not  so  much  to  the  alleged  inherent  sinfulness,  of  these  amuse- 
ments, as  to  the  circumstance  that  they  actually  substitute  for, 
and  so  dimmish  the  intensity  of,  the  specifically  religious  mys- 
ticism. It  is  a  clear  modern  instance  of  the  4  jealous  God' ; 
and  this  jealousy  is  justified  in  so  far  as  pleasure  is  disposed  to 
ignore  its  dependence  upon  the  whole-idea  for  existence. 

The  language  of  subconsciousness  need  not  misrepresent  the 
facts  of  religious  experience.  With  the  descriptive  skill  of 
James  or  of  Pratt  it  conveys  much  truth  which  could  hardly 
otherwise  be  so  effectively  expressed.  But  it  almost  inevit- 
ably misleads.  For  it  hardly  fails  to  suggest,  first,  a  division 
that  does  not  exist ;  and  second,  a  superhuman  resource  which 
is  different  from  the  resource  of  our  simple  waking  selves. 

As  to  the  first  point,  we  must  insist  on  the  fact  that  there 
is  no  subconsciousness  which  is  out  of  consciousness.  The 
4  allied  subconsciousness'  is  an  organ  of  consciousness  ;  and  the 
4 critical  subconsciousness'  is  present  to  the  'allied  subconscious- 
ness  '  in  the  same  way  that  the  artificial  self  is  present.  The 
*  allied  subconsciousness'  is  simply  the  comprehensive  self 
whose  object  is  4  the  whole.'  After  many  years  of  observation, 
Janet  finds  himself  doubting  whether  even  in  hysterical  patients 
there  may  not  be  a  self  which  envisages  both  the  normal  and 
the  dissociated  segments  of  consciousness.  He  thus  states  his 
own  present  questionings :  "  Does  not  the  hysteric  herself 
possess  a  sort  of  insane  belief  which  makes  her  relinquish 
certain  phenomena  ?  Up  to  what  point  is  she  sincere  in  her 
declarations  of  ignorance  ?  Does  she  not  to  a  certain  extent 
deceive  herself?"  etc.1  And  what  may  hold  good  in  such 
abnormal  deepening  of  the  cleft  between  the  artificial  self  and 
subconsciousness,  I  cannot  doubt  to  be  true  of  our  normal 
relation  to  subconsciousness  —  namely,  that  we  are  conscious 
of  our  '  subconsciousness'  all  the  time.  The  subconscious  is 
not  something  which  we  should  think  of  as  a  distinct  gland  of 
psychical  life,  accumulating  its  own  stores  and  occasionally 
1  Subconscious  Phenomena,  p.  66. 


538  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

overflowing  into  the  central  self.  The  subconscious  is  the 
deposit  of  our  own  logical  sense,  our  own  value-consciousness 
and  moral  judgment,  our  own  metaphysical  instinct,  in  short,  of 
our  own  whole-idea,  in  its  unceasing  criticism  upon  the  judg- 
ments of  our  partial,  strenuous,  and  artificial  self.  It  con- 
tains the  opposite,  or  antithesis,  which  our  artificial  self  at  any 
moment  needs  to  justify  it  and  make  it  completely  true ;  it 
contains,  therefore,  the  next  turn  in  the  dialectic  of  experience : 
—  all  of  Hegel's  categories  may  be  conceived  to  spring  up  in 
order  out  of  subconsciousness. 

And  this  may  serve  to  correct  also  the  second  misconception 
which  the  language  of  subconsciousness  arouses,  namely,  that  we 
have  here  a  mysterious  and  superhuman  faculty  of  knowledge. 
Not  that  it  leads  us  to  think  too  highly  of  our  capacities. 
That  reflection  of  von  Hartmann's  is  hardly  too  sanguine, 
however  absurdly  it  is  expressed :  "  Let  us  not  despair  at 
having  a  mind  so  practical  and  so  lowly,  so  unpoetical  and  so 
little  spiritual;  there  is  within  the  innermost  sanctuary  of 
each  of  us  a  marvelous  something  of  which  we  are  uncon- 
scious, which  dreams  and  prays  while  we  labor  to  earn  our 
daily  bread/' 1  Well,  so  there  is ;  only,  we  are  not  uncon- 
scious of  it.  Subconsciousness  has  indeed  infinite  resources, 
but  they  are  our  resources  —  they  are  the  resources  of  the 
infinite  idea  such  as  we  in  our  normal  waking  capacity  do 
rightfully  possess,  and  such  as  we  shall  in  time  learn  to 
command. 

1  Quoted  by  Hart,  Subconscious  Phenomena,  p.  106. 


n 


THE  RELATIONS   BETWEEN  IDEA  AND  VALUE 
UNDERSTOOD  THROUGH   BIOLOGY.1 

IT  is  a  besetting  fault  of  our  constructive  thinking  to  over- 
estimate the  load  which  a  distinction  will  carry.  We 
prove  that  conscience  is  uniquely  different  from  the  calculus 
of  values  and  think  we  have  saved  ethics.  We  discover  that 
theoretical  judgments  and  judgments  of  appreciation  are  fairly 
independent,  and  hasten  to  found  philosophies  of  religion  upon 
the  breach.  With  these  and  other  dichotomies  we  renew 
the  experience  that  unless  we  have  something  more  than  a 
difference,  what  we  accomplish  is  simply  to  insulate  our  ethics 
and  our  religion.  What  tempts  us  repeatedly  into  this  dead 
corner  is,  I  believe,  the  conviction  that  rnind  must  be  studied 
on  its  own  ground :  whereas  the  truth  is  that  regarded  thus 
intimately  and  ideally  the  objects  of  our  inner  experience 
tend  to  fall  into  just  these  fruitless  disparities.2  In  my  own 

1  From  an  article  published  in  Psychological  Bulletin,  Vol.  v,  No.  5 
(May  15,  1908). 

2  The  more  contemporary  psychology  exerts  itself  to  be  purely  experi- 
ential, the  more  it  finds  itself  busied  in  listing  the  '  irreducible '  elements 
of  the  mind.     This  is  true  particularly  of  German  psychology  where  good 
judgment   is   less   likely  to   interfere  with   consistency  of   method.     It 
might  save  some  trouble  to  observe  that  all  aspects  of  the  mind  as  pure  ex- 
perience are  irreducible.    Pleasure  is  pleasure  ;  Begriff  is  Begriff  ;  reason 
is  reason;  nothing  is  identical  with  anything  else  —  not  even  with  the 
aggregate  of  its  elements  ;  everything  is  simple  and  unique.     It  is  well 
to  note  this  truth,  —  to  insist  on  it  is  to  spin  on  our  boot-heels.     An  ir- 
reducible is  an  object  of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  what  it  is  ;  of 
this  material  no  science  can  be  made.     The  tendency  which  isolates  these 
objects  has  something  idealistic  about  it,  perhaps  ;  but  since  it  has  no- 
thing but  the  '  given '  to  offer,  it  is  necessarily  dogmatic  and  exclamatory. 
Only  a  genuine  idealism  can  afford  to  be  thoroughly  materialistic  in  its 
first  explanations. 


640  IDEA  AND  VALUE 

attempts  to  gain  relief  from  such  situations  I  have  found 
myself  moving,  more  or  less  clearly,  in  the  direction  of  phys- 
ical theory. 

I  have  come  to  believe  that  there  is  a  certain  inevitable 
logic  in  this.  Our  inner  experiences,  our  oughts,  our  happi- 
nesses, our  values,  even  our  pleasures  among  themselves,  must  as 
objects  of  thought  remain  miscellaneous  furniture,  each  turning 
its  back  to  the  other  in  default  of  common  understanding, 
unless  we  can  bring  some  finely  indifferent  unit  of  order  and 
comparison  into  them.  The  first  business  of  all  explanation 
is  to  express  a  thing  in  terms  of  what  it  is  not  —  an  event  in 
terms  of  its  cause,  truth  in  terms  of  process,  sensation  in 
terms  of  motion.  Other  things  equal,  the  more  alien  in  nature 
the  terms  in  which  a  thing  is  expressed  the  more  successful 
the  explanation :  the  thing  has  its  roots  in  the  utmost  corners 
of  reality — the  demonstration  is  complete.1  Now  nothing  is 
so  admirable  in  its  categorical  indifference  to  the  concerns  of 
the  spirit  as  is  physical  nature.  It  has  no  member  either  in 
the  psychical  movement  or  influenced  by  it.  It  is  a  seamless 
garment  of  interweaving  threads  ;  it  is  what  the  mathemati- 
cian calls,  in  a  word,  a  closed  group,  and  the  physicist,  a  con- 
servative system.  This  complete  conceptual  independence  it 
is  which  chiefly  qualifies  it  for  serving  as  a  terminus  of  explana- 
tions for  the  peculiarities  of  spirit.  Its  alien  quality  (once  it 
is  admitted  to  be  a  part  of  the  same  world  with  spirit)  insures 
that  no  aspect  of  consciousness  will  be  unrepresented  in  the 
physical  system ;  there  will  be  nothing  even  in  the  relation  of 
1  The  difficulty  always  is  to  see  that  such  explanations  explain.  To 
explain  a  thing  by  what  it  is  not  —  that  is  to  explain  one  mystery  by 
another.  But  is  there  nothing  illuminating  about  that  ?  The  company 
which  miseries  are  said  to  love  lightens  them  ;  mysteries  love  company 
also,  and  for  a  similar  reason.  If  we  are  satisfied  to  look  no  longer  for 
the  supports  of  the  earth  because  a  group  of  unsupported  planets  can  be 
self-supporting  we  must  be  prepared  to  recognize  similar  relations  among 
facts.  Every  datum,  taken  alone,  is  dark,  just  because  it  is  ultimate. 
This  stranding  upon  *  data '  is  empiricism's  weak  spot,  and  its  opportunity. 
The  thing  that  relieves  data  of  darkness  is,  not  more  data  exactly,  but  the 
group-form  into  which  data  assemble  themselves. 


IDEA  AND  VALUE  541 

consciousness  to  its  world  of  objects  and  to  other  subjects 
which  is  not  shown  in  its  field  by  some  exact  metaphor.  That 
is  to  say,  —  the  elements  of  consciousness  which  on  their  own 
separate  ground  are  mutually  repellent,  find  themselves  mir- 
rored in  a  homogeneous  world  no  part  of  which  can  get  out  of 
relation  to  any  other,  and  from  which,  therefore,  if  we  have  the 
key  to  the  metaphor,  those  relations  can  be  read  and  understood. 

But  this  logical  hint  is  enforced  by  a  more  substantial  con- 
sideration. It  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  answer  to  any 
question  will  be  found  in  the  context  of  the  phenomenon  that 
calls  forth  the  question.  There  are  good  grounds  for  think- 
ing that  whatever  plurality  the  mind  shows,  whatever  temporal 
movement  and  flux,  is  due  to  its  entanglement  in  nature ;  or, 
to  read  the  same  relation  from  the  other  end,  nature  may  be 
the  temporal  and  plural  life  of  the  mind.  So  of  each  several 
aspect  of  the  mind.  Conscience,  for  instance,  has  no  variety,  no 
application,  no  career,  except  for  its  commerce  with  our « empiri- 
cal' instincts  and  desires ;  and  desire,  in  turn,  has  no  variety 
nor  development,  except  in  the  toils  of  a  differentiating  organ- 
ism. Very  probably,  also,  conscience  splits  off  from  desire 
or  desire  from  conscience  on  some  rock  of  nature.  Hence 
without  any  assumption  as  to  which  of  the  two,  nature  or 
mind,  is  the  prime  mover  in  this  differentiating  process,  we 
should  naturally  look  for  our  principles  of  synthesis  in  that 
same  region  of  things  which  reveals  the  cleavages.  Genetic 
surveys  have  always  the  advantage  of  showing  the  emergence 
of  the  thing  in  its  4  natural '  relations  —  in  the  case  of  con- 
science, for  instance,  it  will  be  found  in  the  company  of  those 
desires  and  impulses  with  which  it  is  destined  to  concern 
itself  as  regulator.  Nature  can  give  no  sign  of  conscience 
except  in  the  midst  of  its  business.  We  have  not  first  to 
deduce  the  thing  and  then  its  application  ;  but  if  we  find  it  at 
all,  we  shall  find  the  application  first  and  the  thing  in  the 
heart  of  the  application. 

Now  to  decipher  the  physical  substratum  of  mind,  what  we 
most  need  is  a  distinction  of  categories.  Not  every  aspect  of 


642  IDEA  AND  VALUE 

consciousness  is  presented  in  the  physical  context  by  a  separate 
organ  or  process  ;  we  must  be  ready  to  appeal  to  the  higher 
physical  categories,  the  configurations  of  organs  and  processes, 
accelerations  of  processes,  and  other  differentials  and  modifi- 
cations of  energy.  What  nature  shows  us  is  not  simply  a 
metaphor  of  consciousness  (and  hardly  that  —  for  its  language 
is  all  but  literal),  but  it  shows  us  a  finished  analysis  of 
consciousness.  We  know  that  whereas  in  itself  pleasure  is 
simple,  conscience  is  simple,  and  nature  is  simple,  the  attempt  to 
express  one  in  terms  of  another  brings  out  the  subtleties  of  each  ; 
and  we  shall  not  expect  to  find  every  unitary  mental  state 
marked  out  in  the  body  by  tangibly  colligated  physiological 
phenomena.  We  should  be  guided  much  more  truly  by  the 
principle  that  psychical  categories  are  complementary  to  physi- 
cal categories.  The  first  aspect  of  a  psychical  one  will  be  a 
physical  many  ;  this  physical  many  will  have  its  physical  unity 
also,  but  that  unity  will  not  be  in  the  same  class  of  objects 
with  the  many  —  will  be  found  in  physical  functions  which 
are  the  more  derivative  in  proportion  as  the  psychical  category 
is  more  substantial.  The  unity  of  the  4  self '  may  thus  be  the 
last  thing  for  which  the  simple  physical  expression  is  found 
(no  pineal  body  among  other  bodies),  though  that  simple 
expression  necessarily  exists.  The  processes  which  belong  to  a 
self  are  naturally  more  widely  dispersed  and  more  various  than 
those  which  belong  to  such  imperfect  and  fragmentary  unities 
within  a  self  as  *  an  experience,' '  an  idea,' 4  a  pleasure,'  etc.  In 
the  interpretation  of  the  freedom  of  consciousness  we  have  a 
clear  case  of  the  complementary  nature  of  physical  and  psychi- 
cal categories.  The  freedom  and  initiative  of  consciousness  is 
represented  in  nature  by  the  obedient  regularity,  sometimes 
called  the  necessity,  of  physical  sequence.  This  is  the  only  basis 
upon  which  the  relation  of  the  free  spirit  to  nature  can  be  made 
intelligible.  In  a  machine  whose  parts  have  any  slack  or  lost 
motion  the  eye  will  discover  the  origin  of  pushes  and  pulls  by 
the  direction  of  the  slack.  But  in  a  machine  all  of  whose  con- 
nections are  perfect,  so  that  there  is  not  even  infinitesimal  slack 


IDEA  AND  VALUE  543 

in  any  part,  it  is  impossible  for  observation  to  discover  whether 
the  wheel  is  pulling  the  piston  or  the  piston  pushing  the  wheel. 
Nature  as  a  mechanism  certainly  offers  no  visible  suggestion  as 
to  the  seat  of  its  original  impulses ;  it  simply  goes  its  perfect 
way ;  and  this  alone  it  is  which  enables  me  to  accept  unreservedly 
the  testimony  of  consciousness  that  itself  is  the  active  and  origi- 
nal thing  in  the  world,  all  else  being  ultimately  passive.  With 
this  understanding  the  chief  difficulty  in  all  biological  accounts 
of  conscience  is  relieved  —  how,  namely,  out  of  natural  law, 
that  is,  out  of  absolute  obedience,  can  come  the  dictator.  It  is 
just  because  nature  is  the  region  of  perfect  obedience  that  the 
dictator  has  to  4  come  out.'  In  all  strictness,  dictatorship  is 
simply  the  permanent  outside  of  nature  ;  and  nature  gives  birth 
to  conscience  as  it  were,  by  way  of  confession.  What  we  see  in 
nature  is  the  gradual  perfection  of  the  receiving  organ,  so  that 
freedom  acquires  growing  significance  as  life  moves  on ;  but 
some  receiving  organ  is  always  there,  the  regular  is  the  contin- 
uous signature  of  the  free.  We  have  therefore  no  separate 
place  to  make  in  our  account  of  value  or  conscience  for  free- 
dom, since  it  is  completely  expressed  in  the  character  which 
makes  nature  nature. 

The  term  4  idea '  will  play  the  fundamental  role  in  the 
theory  I  have  to  propose,  and  it  will  be  desirable  to  sketch  its 
physical  interpretation  before  attempting  the  further  ques- 
tion of  the  nature  of  value-experience.  I  shall  attempt  in  the 
end  to  show,  through  these  physical  expressions,  that  values 
and  conscience  are  functions  in  the  life  of  4  ideas,'  and  to 
point  out  definitely,  in  the  same  language,  what  these  functions 
are.  Our  disjointed  world  of  facts,  appreciations,  and  duties, 
may  then  be  seen  in  some  intelligible  shape  and  connection  on 
a  basis  other  than  metaphysical,  though  at  every  point  the 
shapes  of  nature  are  but  the  intaglio  of  the  spirit. 

I.  THE  BIOLOGICAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  «  IDEA  ' 
If  our  interpretation  of  freedom  is  valid,  the .  fact  that  any 
given  physiological  apparatus  works  'mechanically'  creates 


544  IDEA  AND  VALUE 

no  presumption  that  it  is  unaccompanied  by  consciousness. 
Consciousness  is  not  introduced  into  the  biological  series  at 
the  point  where  mechanism  fails  to  meet  the  needs  of  adjust- 
ment, because  there  is  no  such  point.  Hence  '  instincts, 
however  truly  explained  as  congeries  of  simple  automatisms  of 
tropic  character,  may  at  the  same  time  represent  some  element 
of  consciousness.  Such  an  element  would  necessarily  be  a 
*  universal '  or  general  idea;  for  the  instinct  is  related  not  to 
individual  objects,  but  to  a  type  or  class  of  objects,  in  such 
wise  that  whatever  object  affords  the  proper  stimulus  releases 
the  appropriate  action.  To  consciousness  the  stimulus  would 
appear  not  as  '  this  individual  object '  but  rather  as 4  a  specimen 
of  this  kind  of  thing '  toward  which  such  and  such  a  line  of 
action  is  desirable. 

The  repetition  of  the  stimulus  would  present  to  conscious- 
ness '  another  specimen  of  the  same  type,'  and  the  similarity 
of  response  might  connect  itself  for  that  consciousness  with 
some  quality  common  to  the  two  particular  objects ;  but  we 
who  look  on  can  see  that  the  identity  of  the  idea  lies  not 
primarily  in  any  objective  characters  of  the  two  experiences, 
but  rather  in  something  which  the  organism  carries  around 
with  it,  and  which  exists  when  there  are  no  4  experiences  '  to 
set  off  its  train  of  behavior.  I  wish  to  show  not  only  that  there 
is  a  biological  equivalent  for  the  permanent  identity  (some- 
times called  the  4  timelessness  ')  of  the  idea,  and  for  the  native 
difference  between  an  idea  and  *  an  experience,'  but  also  to 
show  that  the  idea  has  a  more  continuous  presence  in  conscious- 
ness than  the  experiences  in  which  it  is  subsumed  from  time 
to  time.  An  idea  is  in  fact  never  absent  from  consciousness ; 
the  prevalent  belief  that  it  vanishes  and  reappears  is  a  con- 
fusion between  the  idea  and  the  experience.  Recognitions  of 
objects  are  intermittent ;  but  our  ideas,  it  should  be  evident, 
are  not  what  we  think  of,  they  are  what  we  think  with.  Now 
whatever  else  the  unity  of  a  consciousness  may  mean,  it  also 
means  that  there  is  no  isolated  action  of  ideas,  but  that  I 
think  with  all  of  them  at  once  in  each  moment,  though  the 


IDEA  AND  VALUE  545 

'bearing'  of  any  given  idea  upon  any  given  experience  may 
be  very  remote. 

But  beside  the  ideas  that  correspond  to  instincts,  that  is,  to 
the  various  modes  of  regular,  quasi-official  dealing  with  objects, 
there  is  a  set  of  ideas  of  a  different  sort,  which  I  may  call  the 
field-ideas^  such  as  the  idea  of  extension,  or  of  the  physical 
continuum,  or  of  a  particular  friendship,  or  that  important 
symbolic  idea  4  the  whole  of  things.'  These  do  not  correspond 
to  any  outliuable  instincts ;  their  biological  expression  must 
be  sought  elsewhere.  But  inasmuch  as  the  field-ideas  develop 
in  close  concomitance  with  the  development  of  the  instincts,  the 
nature  of  the  biological  expression  may  appear  by  considering 
the  interaction  of  instinct-ideas  in  the  course  of  evolution. 

The  evolution  of  ideas  in  its  most  general  biological  char- 
acter may  be  summarized  as  a  matter  of  the  balancing  of  in- 
stincts —  that  is,  of  the  emergence  of  4  secondary '  or  counter- 
instincts,  which  act  together  with  the  '  primary  '  instincts  as 
more  general  instincts  than  either  alone.  Such  a  pair  will  be 
represented  in  consciousness  by  a  more  general  idea.  Now  we 
have  to  note  that  every  time  one  instinct  has  been  balanced 
by  another,  consciousness  has  acquired  not  only  a  new  type 
or  class  of  objects,  but  also  an  idea  of  much  greater  scope 
than  that  corresponding  to  either  of  the  two  instincts  separ- 
ately. Just  as  my  present  impulse  cannot  be  checked  by  the 
suggestion  of  something  future  without  making  me  aware  not 
merely  of  the  two  points  in  time,  but  more  or  less  dimly  of 
the  stretch  of  time  between  ;  so  the  generalized  habit  of  modify- 
ing the  present  impulse  by  the  consideration  of  future  contin- 
gencies cannot  be  established  without  making  the  idea  of  the 
time-field  a  correspondingly  firm  element  of  my  conscious 
vista.  So  in  proportion  as  I  learn  to  modify  my  reflex  upon 
what  is  here  by  the  suggestion  of  what  is  not  here,  the  idea 
of  space  becomes  a  mastered  range  of  mental  vision.  The 
logic  of  the  process  is  this  ;  that  whenever  an  x  meets  its  non-x, 
x  having  been  my  largest  class,  the  two  can  coexist  in  the  same 
mind  only  as  parts  of  some  '  universe  of  discourse  '  whose  scope 


546  IDEA  AND  VALUE 

will  in  general  be  very  much  greater  than  x.  The  develop- 
ment of  an  inhibitory  instinct,  therefore,  can  never  mean  the 
setting  of  one  suggestion  against  another  simply,  but  it  means 
opening  a  whole  field  of  possible  variations  where  before  there 
was  but  one  fixed  line.  This  whole  process  of  balancing 
instincts,  impulses,  suggestions  and  associations  means  that  the 
mental  range  is  becoming  more  complete.  Man's  peculiarity 
in  biological  terms  is  his  extraordinary  balance  —  throughout 
his  being  he  stands  on  two  feet.  It  is  this  same  peculiarity 
which  in  psychical  terms  is  expressed  in  his  extraordinary 
capacity  for  gripping  large  totals,  and  at  last  for  coming  to  use 
the  category  '  the  whole.'  The  use  of  this  category  is  reason.1 
Now  any  one  of  these  vista-  or  field-ideas,  as  we  may  call  them, 
varies  greatly  in  vividness.  This  vividness  will  be  a  function 
of  the  intensity  of  the  sc-impulse  and  also  of  the  intensity  of 
the  non-x  suggestion.  The  consciousness  of  time,  for  instance, 
is  made  vivid  by  the  conflict  between  the  claims  of  a  pungent 
present  and  a  pungent  future.  Let  me  suggest  that  a  vivid 
representation  of  a  future  moment  and  therewith  of  the  time- 
field,  whether  voluntary  or  resultant,  stands  for  an  expendi- 
ture of  actual  physical  energy ;  and  that  the  continuous  and 
easy  presence  of  future  and  past  to  our  vision  represents  a 
high  level  of  potential  energy  in  the  nervous  elements  con- 
cerned. In  general,  I  would  propose  that  the  extent  of  the 
ideal-whole  in  whose  presence  a  conscious  being  lives  and  to 
which  he  adjusts  his  action  is  biologically  represented  by  the 
potential  energy  of  the  nervous  centers. 

II.   THE  THEORY  OF  VALUE-EXPERIENCE 

The  earliest  and  simplest  instincts  seem  to  be  of  such  sort 
that  the  *  perception '  of  the  stimulus  and  the  4  gratification '  of 

1  The  effect  of  the  counter-instinct  in  developing  a  field-idea  shows 
itself  in  the  phenomenon  of  hesitation.  Now  the  resultant  of  two  instincts 
is  just  as  determinate  as  the  action  of  one.  Hesitation  means  not  that 
two  possibilities  interact,  but  that  a  range  of  possibilities  has  to  be  run 
over  as  a  relatively  independent  object.  Man's  fitness  for  reason  is 
concomitant  with  his  pre-eminent  fitness  for  hesitation. 


IDEA  AND  VALUE  547 

the  instinct  are  one  and  the  same  process.  Dealing  with  its 
object  either  by  contact  or  by  immediate  reaction  the  subsump- 
tion  of  the  general  idea  is  the  satisfaction.  Despite  the 
immense  veiling  of  the  phenomena  of  pleasure  and  pain  by 
the  complexities  of  development,  the  profuse  demarcation  of 
states  of  consciousness  as  4  ideas'  which  are  neither  instinct- 
ideas  nor  field-ideas  but  perhaps  fragments  thereof,  I  believe 
it  can  be  shown  that  all  pleasure  is  still  of  the  nature  either 
of  subsumption  (wherein  an  idea,  or  a  conceptual  whole,  is 
applied  to  one  of  its  instances)  or  of  induction  (wherein  some 
instance  or  group  of  instances  are  provided  with  a  conceptual 
whole  which  covers  them).  The  joy  of  making  a  successful 
induction  and  the  satisfaction  which  a  child  takes  in  applying 
a  new  word,  are  typical  of  all  our  positive  values. 

I  cannot  here  make  attempt  to  cover  the  field  of  value- 
experience,  nor  to  account  for  all  the  well-known  anomalies  of 
our  feelings  of  pleasure  and  pain.  I  shall  review  simply  in 
very  rough  outline  a  series  of  phenomena  which  seem  to 
me  fundamental  in  the  sense  that  any  theory  which  will  explain 
them  will  explain  the  rest  in  the  long  run. 

1.  Pleasures  connected  immediately  with  the  senses  and 
with  the  several  physiological  functions  have  their  marked 
rhythmic  intervals  ;  and  the  longer  the  period  of  intermittency, 
the  greater,  in  general,  the  volume  of  the  pleasure  (Spencer). 
This  dimension  of  pleasure  seems  to  be  a  function  of  the  nutri- 
tion of  the  organs  concerned. 

2.  Pleasure  is  itself  a  destructive  and  exhausting  process. 
This  is  a  natural  inference  from  (1).     Pleasure  heightens 
life  —  that  is,  it  quickens  expense ;  it  draws  living  to  a  focus 
as  a  flame  creates  its  own  draught.     The  intensity  of  a  pleas- 
ure varies  directly  with  the  rate  of  destructive  metabolism. 

Pleasure  may  '  accompany  states  in  which  the  organism  is 
being  built  up '  (Royce,  and  many  others) ;  but  the  process  of 
building  up  is  incidental  to  the  pleasure  itself,  a  biologically 
fortunate  incident  indeed,  but  having  no  representation  in  con- 
sciousness. The  actual  succoring  of  the  organism  occurs  later 


648  IDEA  AND   VALUE 

in  time  than  the  pleasure  and  affects  first  of  all  parts  quite 
different  from  those  concerned  in  the  pleasure.  In  the  long 
run  pleasure  is  normally  profitable  to  the  organism  ;  it  usually 
accompanies  only  such  expense  as  the  body  is  happy  to  restore ; 
the  drain  affects  primarily  funds  which  have  been  appropria- 
ted for  that  particular  purpose  ;  and  these  circumstances  have 
something  to  do  with  differentiating  pleasurable  expense  from 
painful  expense.  But  per  se,  pleasure  is  a  drain. 

This  is  a  clear  instance  of  the  complementary  relation 
between  physical  and  psychical  categories  above  noticed.  As 
an  experience,  pleasure  is  indeed  a  filling  up  of  the  cup,  the 
supplying  of  a  need.  And  the  deeper  the  draft  upon  vital 
resources,  the  greater  the  fulfilment  of  desire.  This  holds 
true  to  the  limit.  Only  that  delight  can  ultimately  satisfy 
and  fill  the  soul  which  drains  the  body  to  the  point  of 
death.  Indeed,  all  joy  is  akin  to  death;  the  fortunate  drone 
unites  with  the  queen,  and  dies — a  rapport  symbolic  of 
all  pleasure. 

It  is,  in  part,  confusion  between  these  inverse  psychical  and 
physical  categories  which  has  misled  so  many  of  the  best 
observers  into  the  belief  that  pleasure  is  a  psychical  accom- 
paniment of  physiological  construction.  It  is  extremely  doubt- 
ful whether  such  construction  enters  into  consciousness  at  all. 

3.  It  follows  from  (2)  that  the  expense  in  pleasure  is  not 
confined  to  the  organ  immediately  concerned  with  the  object 
which  is  the  occasion  of  the  pleasure.     To  a  certain  degree, 
change  of  object  will  renew  pleasure,  and  variety  of  object 
preserve  it ;  but  there  is  evidently  a  common  store  which  every 
pleasure  draws  upon,  independent  of  the  particular  organ  or 
object.     A  person  thoroughly  exhausted  in  one  joy  is  ready 
to  enjoy  nothing  else  but  Nirvana. 

4.  The  quality,  'pleasure,'    is  a   function  neither  of  the 
special  nor  of  the  general  exhausting  process  alone,  but  of  some 
relation  between  them.     Pleasure  is  at  the  same  time  a  central 
and  a  peripheral  experience. 

In  psychical  language,  pleasure  requires  attention.     The 


IDEA  AND   VALUE  549 

physiological  design  of  consciousness  must  be  one  of  concen- 
tration. However  wide  the  range  of  a  person's  affairs  his 
whole  interest  must  be  recalled  to  the  simplest  experience  he 
would  enjoy.  The  process  of  '  becoming  absorbed,'  let  us  say 
in  music,  is  at  first  a  conflict  with  the  inertia  of  other  trends 
of  interest :  they  must  all  fall  into  line  at  last.  The  inten* 
sity  of  the  pleasure  depends  upon  the  perfection  of  the  focus, 
that  is,  upon  the  absence  of  competition  among  objects  of 
attention.  The  person  is  all  in  the  pleasure,  no  matter  if  it 
be  a  *  mere  '  sensation. 

5.  But  if  it  is  important  for  the  perfection  of  the  experience 
that  other  interests  cease  to  compete,  it  is  equally  important 
that  they  continue  to  exist.  The  quantity  of  the  pleasure 
depends  on  the  completeness  of  the  recall,  but  it  also  depends 
on  the  presence  of  interests  to  be  recalled.  Pleasure  is  a  func- 
tion not  simply  of  the  fact  of  focus,  but  also  of  the  amount  of 
stuff  concerned  in  the  focusing.  In  this  respect,  different 
pleasures,  so  far  from  being  competitive,  depend  each  one  on 
the  existence  of  the  others  to  give  them  magnitude :  every  pleas- 
ure has  one  dimension  which  varies  directly  with  the  number 
of  instincts,  or  desires  of  possible  kinds  of  pleasure  —  and  not 
simply  with  the  degree  of  differentiation,  but  with  the  ground 
covered  by  the  differentiated  interests,  that  is,  with  the  range 
of  the  objects.  In  other  words,  pleasure  is  a  function,  among 
other  things,  of  the  idea-horizon  ;  any  given  pleasure  echoes 
into  the  whole  cavern  of  a  self,  and  varies  in  quantity  with  the 
volume  and  resonance  of  that  cavern.  Even  within  the  career 
of  a  single  pleasure  it  is  noticeable  that  as  absorption  becomes 
complete  and  the  circumference  of  the  circle  of  consciousness 
begins  to  cpntract,  the  pleasure  has  passed  its  culmination,  and 
will  tend  to  zero  until  the  interruption  of  another  object  of 
attention  dissipates  it. 

All  this  points  to  the  hypothesis  that  in  all  pleasure  our 
*  field-ideas'  are  at  work  (not  as  thought  of,  but  as  thinking). 
The  4  circumference  of  consciousness '  is  a  variable  which  cor- 
responds exactly  to  those  changes  in  the  vividness  of  the  field- 


650  IDEA  AND  VALUE 

ideas  which  we  supposed  to  represent  a  certain  tension  or  poten- 
tial in  the  centers.  And  this  tension,  we  said,  was  in  turn  a 
function  of  the  competition  of  impulses.  For  example,  the 
extension  of  time-vista  both  foward  and  backward  which 
marked  the  earliest  economic  advances  of  mankind,  is  concom- 
itant with  the  growing  possibility  of  inhibiting  a  present 
impulse  by  the  idea  of  a  future  value.  The  continuous  sub- 
jection of  impulse  to  the  consent  of  all  the  possibilities  in  a 
time-field  means  indeed  an  interference  with  pleasure  in  the 
sense  that  each  claimant  for  attention  has  to  struggle  for  pos- 
session ;  but  it  means  that  every  object  which  gains  this  atten- 
tion is  the  source  of  a  pleasure  whose  value  is  greater  than 
that  of  an  undisputed  enjoyment  of  the  same  object  in  propor- 
tion to  the  enhancement  of  the  time-idea.  In  physical  lan- 
guage, every  increase  of  the  potential  energy  of  the  centers 
increases  all  conscious  values  in  the  same  proportion. 

What  the  physiological  processes  are  which  play  themselves 
off  in  the  actual  business  of  enjoyment,  I  can  here  do  no  more 
than  hint.  All  pleasure  is  rhythmic  and  tends  to  self-main- 
tenance. A  mood,  for  example,  which  is  a  value-experience  on 
a  somewhat  roomy  and  deliberate  scale,  becomes  pleasurable  in 
proportion  as  it  learns  the  arts  of  life,  as  melancholy  feeds  and 
reproduces  itself  from  node  to  node  of  its  rhythm.  The  quality  we 
call  4  pleasure '  is  deeply  connected  with  this  formal  character 
of  the  processes  involved  (a  character  which  makes  of  them  pre- 
cisely what  the  mathematicians  mean  by  a  'group').  On  the 
conscious  side,  it  will  be  evident  by  a  little  observation,  that 
the  change  which  occurs  when  a  trying  experience  after  repe- 
tition becomes  pleasurable,  may  be  described  as  the  acquisition 
of  an  idea  under  which  each  element  of  the  experience  is 
subsumable  as  it  rises.  When  for  instance  anxiety  in  a  given 
situation  gives  way  to  confidence,  we  have  acquired  on  the 
intellectual  side,  vista,  and  on  the  practical  side  a  readiness  to 
meet  with  appropriate  action  whatever  type  of  event  may  arise 
in  the  course  of  the  experience.  So  with  a  mood  :  it  is  impli- 
citly a  Weltanschauung,  and  it  lives  by  the  process  of  corrob- 


IDEA  AND  VALUE  661 

orating  its  theory  of  things  in  the  events  that  pass  its  focus ; 
in  this  commerce  of  its  idea  with  the  instances  of  life  lies  its 
satisfaction,  be  it  a  gloom  or  a  glory.  I  propose  that  the  same 
is  true  of  organic  pleasures.  In  them,  nature  has  embodied 
in  structure  the  idea  concerned ;  she  has  solved  the  problem 
of  that  particular  evil  for  us  (for  doubtless  all  the  destruc- 
tion which  is  at  the  heart  of  consciousness  is  an  organic  prob- 
lem) ;  and  the  idea  she  uses  will  be  most  difficult  to  drag  into 
the  foreground  of  vision.  But  that  the  idea  is  present  in  phys- 
iological concentration,  and  can  in  time  be  read,  no  one  who 
follows  the  spiritual  progeny  of  any  instinct  can  question. 

My  thesis  then  is  simply  this :  that  all  pleasure  is  essentially 
a  process  of  intercourse  between  an  idea  and  its  instance. 
The  field-ideas  of  any  consciousness  will  be  concerned  in  all  of 
its  pleasures  ;  and  each  of  these  pleasures  will  have  as  one  of 
its  dimensions  a  quantity  which  varies  with  the  effective  range 
of  its  total  field,  or,  biologically  speaking,  with  the  potential 
energy  of  the  centers. 

III.  THE  THEORY  OF  CONSCIENCE 

Since  Spencer,  much  has  been  done  by  way  of  distinguishing 
conscience  from  those  types  of  inhibition  which  more  or  less 
closely  resemble  it  and  ally  themselves  with  it.  The  work  of 
describing  psychologically  the  unique  characters  of  conscience 
is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  always  unfinished  ;  but  it  will  be 
sufficient  for  our  purposes  if,  by  way  of  a  phenomenology  of 
conscience,  we  may  make  clear  the  separation  between  con- 
science itself  and  the  load  which  conscience  carries  or  adopts. 

The  load  is  the  relatively  changeable  aspect  of  conscience. 
Every  individual  in  the  course  of  his  career  makes  numerous 
changes  in  the  points  of  scruple  which  constitute  the  burden 
or  application  of  his  conscience ;  the  race  has  done  the  same 
thing  on  far  greater  scale.  Perhaps  the  first  burden  and 
certainly  the  most  permanent  protegees  of  conscience  are  the 
4  secondary  instincts  '  —  but  they  are  not  conscience.  This 
load  makes  use  of  all  accessible  means  of  support :  pains, 


552  IDEA  AND  VALUE 

punishments,  associations  of  approval  and  disapproval,  and  all 
the  well-known  instruments  of  social  propagation,  so  that  in 
the  contents  of  conscience  as  we  find  it  in  ourselves  there  are 
motives  traceable  not  only  to  our  own  education  and  experi- 
ence but  to  every  stage  of  our  historic  and  phylogenetic  jour- 
ney, motives  in  which  the  aspirations  of  the  Orient,  or  even 
the  sorrows  of  those  remote  pre-moral  ancestors  whom  Spencer 
invokes,  are  among  the  comparatively  recent  relics.  But  all 
this  is  something  other  than  conscience.  No  theory  indeed 
is  complete  which  does  not  explain  the  circumstance,  remark- 
able enough  in  itself,  that  conscience  has  the  capacity  of  ally- 
ing itself  with  all  this  material  —  that  it  is  able  so  early  in 
human  history  to  lend  effective  support  to  a  struggling 
secondary  instinct,  and  to  turn  the  natural  disadvantage  of 
the  remote  consideration  into  some  sort  of  equivalent  chance 
for  survival.  But  the  first  point  is  to  distinguish  the  thing 
itself  from  all  its  adoptions  ;  and  I  shall  resume  very  sum- 
marily what  seem  to  me  the  most  significant  points  in  that 
separation. 

1.  Conscience  has  nothing  to  do  primarily  with  the  way 
we  feel  about  any  specifiable  kinds  of  action.  For  it  is 
a  more  central  affair  than  can  be  described  in  terms  of  a 
connection  between  types  of  action  and  such  elements  of 
experience  as  might  adhere,  by  association,  etc.,  directly  to 
these  types. 

Nothing  is  more  astonishing  in  the  earliest  history  of  the 
moral  motive  than  the  speed  with  which  it  shakes  free  from 
peripheral  lines  of  association  and  becomes  an  organic  attitude 
to  action  in  general,  which  it  requires  some  use  of  subsuming 
intelligence  to  apply  to  particular  kinds  of  action.  The  func- 
tion of  those  third  parties  to  the  moral  situation  which  appear 
so  early  in  moral  development  —  the  alleged  first  ancestor, 
the  totem,  the  lawgiver,  etc.  —  is  primarily  that  of  supporting 
conscience  in  this  central  position,  the  position,  that  is,  of 
relative  independence  of  the  4  types  of  action '  and  thereby  of 
more  or  less  freely  variable  application  to  them.  Psychologi- 


IDEA   AND   VALUE  553 

cally  expressed,  the  thought  of  an  action  has  to  pass  through 
the  thought  of  this  third  party,  with  the  regime  he  repre- 
sents, before  that  action  or  kind  of  action  is  considered 
right  or  wrong. 

2.  The  painful  quality  which  we  attribute  to  the  motive 
side  of  conscience  is  also  a  part  of  its  load  ;  that  is,  it  is  adven- 
titious.    Conscience  is  necessarily  painful  only  in  so  far  as 
all  hesitation,  or  the  halting  of  immediate  satisfaction,  is  pain- 
ful.    Whatever  traces  and  suggestions  of    past  pains  and 
punishments  conscience  bears  with  it  must  be  referred  to  its 
accretions,    not  to    its   nature.     The    sort   of    check   which 
conscience  imposes  upon  action  is  more  nearly  like  that  which 
some  inarticulate  presentiment  of  a  greater  good  might  impose 
upon  a  definable  good.     But  strictly  speaking,  conscience  has 
nothing  to  do  with  represented  pleasures  any  more  than  with 
represented  pains,  nor  with  any  represented  utilities  of  an 
inheritable  sort,  as  will  appear  from  the  following. 

3.  Conscience  resembles  the  aesthetic  consciousness  in  being 
a  continuous  source  of  new  requirements,  not  traceable  to  any 
'  lessons '  of  previous  experience.     If  it  were  the  record  in  us 
of  experiences  of  any  sort  already  finished  and  organically 
digested  it  would  tend  to  fading  rather  than  to  finesse.     But 
nothing  more  than  conscience  is  subject  to  explorative  origi- 
nation, and  to  the  sport  of  virtuosoship. 

The  theory  of  the  biological  aspect  of  conscience  which  I 
have  now  to  propose  is  simple.  It  depends  upon  the  theory 
of  ideas  and  values  already  developed,  and  needs  but  one 
further  preliminary,  —  the  proposition,  namely,  that  any^wx 
in  consciousness  is,  or  may  become,  itself  an  object  of  or  factor 
in  consciousness. 

Just  as  we  have  impressions  not  only  of  distinct  static 
objects,  as  stones  and  trees,  but  also  of  processes,  as  dawning 
or  waning  of  light ;  so  we  have  awareness  not  alone  of  high 
spirits  and  low  spirits,  but  also  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  spirits, 
if  these  changes  are  sufficiently  rapid  ;  so  also,  of  the  flux  of 
vigor,  of  the  loosening  of  attention,  etc.,  —  sometimes  even 


554  IDEA  AND  VALUE 

of  waking  or  falling  asleep.  I  presume  that  every  flux  in 
consciousness  is  in  some  measure  an  object  of  consciousness, 
for  consciousness  is  by  definition,  4  that  region  in  which 
appearance  and  reality  coincide  ' ;  though  it  may  well  be  that 
few  fluxes  are  separately  registered  and  noted. 

Now  if  our  theory  of  values  is  sound,  the  most  significant 
of  all  fluxes  in  any  consciousness  for  the  integrity  of  its  values 
would  be  a  flux  in  the  effective  range  of  its  field-ideas  ;  for  we 
proposed  that  the  field-ideas  were  factors  in  every  particular 
experience  of  value.  Physically,  every  pleasure  has  for  one 
of  its  factors  a  coefficient  of  potential  tension  in  the  centers ; 
and  the  potential  capacity  of  these  centers  has  been  very  grad- 
ually extended  as  instincts  have  balanced  each  other,  the  most 
sensitive  index  of  this  growth  being  the  range  of  effective 
bearing  of  our  field-ideas  upon  the  immediate  business  of 
living.  Any  act  which  rejects  the  bearing,  let  us  say  of  the 
future  upon  the  present,  wilfully  obscuring  the  time- vista  and 
tending  to  diminish  its  efficiency  in  consciousness,  will  strike 
a  blow  at  the  degree  of  all  values  in  that  consciousness.  It 
will  do  so,  moreover,  in  a  way  of  which  the  agent  can  at  the 
time  have  no  inkling. 

Conscience,  I  believe,  is  the  perception  of  this  differential; 
that  is,  on  the  physical  side,  it  is  a  recognition  of  the  flux, 
real  or  virtual,  of  potential  capacity  in  the  nervous  centers ; 
on  the  side  of  consciousness,  it  is  a  sense  of  flux  in  the  valid 
bearing,  or  efficiency,  of  my  field-ideas.  Or,  since  all  field- 
ideas  in  the  same  consciousness  must  come,  as  we  have  said, 
to  an  understanding  with  each  other,  so  that  they  act  as  parts 
of  a  single  field  which  we  may  symbolize  abstractly  as  l  the 
whole,'  conscience  may  be  described  simply  as  the  perception 
of  flux  in  the  awareness  of  the  whole. 

In  this  description  the  word  perception  is  open  to  valid 
objection,  inasmuch  as  the  consciousness  which  is  experiencing 
the  flux  in  question  does  not  interpret  its  experience  in  terms 
of  any  such  flux.  The  change  which  affects  *  ideas,'  conscious- 
ness always  tries  to  interpret  as  a  change  in  *  experiences,' 


IDEA  AND  VALUE  555 

referring  its  uneasiness  to  the  agency  of  mysterious  objects,  — 
the  4  third  parties '  above  mentioned.  It  would  perhaps  be 
better  to  say  not  that  the  flux  is  *  perceived,'  but  that  this 
actual  flux  has  become  a  separately  effective  agent  in  con- 
sciousness, leaving  undetermined  how  consciousness,  in  its 
more  or  less  bedevilled  efforts  to  construe  to  itself  what  is 
happening,  shall  report  these  effects.  On  the  biological  side 
the  language  seems  to  me  sufficiently  precise.  I  make  no 
attempt  to  portray  to  my  mind  the  ultimate  physical  occur- 
rences —  an  attempt  which  would  be  presumptuous  with  far 
more  knowledge  of  these  processes  than  I  can  boast:  I  am 
content  to  state  what  I  believe  to  be  the  true  genus  of  the 
event  itself.  To  say  that  we  are  aware  of  a  thing,  is  to  say, 
biologically,  that  the  representative  of  the  thing  is  doing  some 
work  within.  The  work  which  conscience  does,  we  thought 
to  be  inhibit! ve  in  character.  Now  wherever  there  are  field- 
ideas  at  all,  there  are  fluxes  of  field-ideas  as  a  matter  of  course : 
but  conscience  begins  when  this  flux  begins  to  be  itself  effec- 
tive, through  whatever  apparatus.  Biologically,  therefore,  we 
may  say  that  the  « recognition '  of  the  flux  above  described 
consists  in  a  resistance  to  a  negative  flux  wherein  the  capacity 
of  the  centers  is  diminished.  The  biological  equivalent  of 
conscience  is :  A  resistance  to  any  tendency  to  diminish  the 
potential  capacity  of  the  nervous  centers.  If  this  supposition 
is  valid,  it  should  at  least  accord  with  the  phenomena  of 
conscience  which  we  have  brought  forward. 

It  is  evident  that  conscience  would  from  the  start  be  inde- 
pendent of  external  experiences  associated  with  any  special 
4  types  of  action.'  Conscience  would  work  just  as  decisively 
in  inhibiting  an  action  which  threatened  our  field-integrity  in 
an  entirely  new  and  unheard-of  way,  as  it  would  in  the  case 
of  a  thoroughly  conventional  mode  of  offence  —  perhaps  better. 
But  any  external  sign  of  disapproval  upon  an  action  undesir- 
able in  this  intimate  way  would  add  its  definite  '  no '  to  the 
less  definite  '  no  '  of  conscience ;  and  any  considerable  group 
of  such  tangible  corroborations  of  conscience  would  form  a 


566  IDEA   AND  VALUE 

body  of  fusions  which  even  to  skilled  psychological  observa- 
tion, if  it  were  of  the  prevalent  point-blank  variety,  would 
defy  analysis.  Conscience  pure  and  simple  is  distinguishable 
only  in  its  work  of  initiative  and  variation. 

And  we  can  see  further  how  conscience  would  have  an 
aesthetic  and  super-useful  character.  As  a  sense  for  a  differ- 
ential, it  would  vary  with  powers  of  discrimination  ;  it  would  be 
a  function  of  'fineness  of  fiber.'  It  is  entirely  conceivable 
that  a  prodigy  of  conscience  should  appear  in  the  midst  of  a 
relatively  rough-shod  community,  which  could  not  be  the  case 
if  conscience  were  the  vanishing  echo  of  an  already  fixed 
racial  inheritance.  But  while  conscience  outstrips  utility,  it  is 
not  hard  to  see  that  it  would  tend  to  be  useful.  For  the  field- 
ideas  are  but  signs  of  the  adequacy  with  which  consciousness 
presents  to  itself  its  world.  Conscience  at  any  time  stands 
for  a  superabundance  of  adaptation.  But,  as  in  many  other 
cases,  nature  has  had  to  adapt  herself  generously  because 
there  was  no  way  whereby  she  could  adapt  just  enough  and 
no  more. 

Finally,  we  can  see  that  as  it  would  be  impossible  for  early 
man  to  discover  the  nature  of  the  evil  that  threatened  him  in 
his  troubles  of  conscience,  so  it  would  be  impossible  for  him 
to  express  it  accurately  in  terms  of  any  known  good.  Its 
voice  in  him,  until  he  seized  upon  the  sticks  and  straws  of 
4  empirical '  corroborations,  would  be  chiefly  that  of  inarticu- 
late resistance,  a  check  which  gave  no  clear  reason  for  its 
presence,  a  categorical  imperative  or  forbiddal.  But  in  so 
far  as  he  tried  to  make  plain  to  himself  the  uneasiness  at  his 
center  he  would  have  to  connect  it  with  the  widest  objects  of 
his  Weltanschauung  —  his  future,  his  ancestors,  and  his  spir- 
its. For  these  remotest  objects  are  only  the  outpost  stakes 
which  we  have  set  as  marks  of  the  widest  total  mental  ranges 
we  have  thus  far  conquered.  The  sense  of  duty  as  a  strain 
indicates  that  the  range  of  4  the  whole  '  is  being  enlarged. 
The  sense  of  pleasure  which  at  length  displaces  duty  in  that 
same  type  of  action  may  mean  that  this  degree  of  totality  is 


IDEA  AND  VALUE  567 

now  secure.  But  unless  we  suppose  that  a  man's  mind  can 
reach  a  complete  adequacy  of  view,  the  sense  of  duty  can 
never,  as  Spencer  suggests,  be  expected  to  disappear. 

The  final  test  of  any  such  theory  as  this  will  be  found  in  its 
ability  to  explain  the  history  of  the  evolution  of  conscience. 
This  immense  task  must  be  reserved.  What  I  have  here 
aimed  to  do  has  been  accomplished  —  to  show  the  natural 
relations  of  ideas,  values,  and  duties,  through  the  medium 
of  their  common  biological  context. 


Ill 

THE   KNOWLEDGE   OF  INDEPENDENT   REALITY1 

IF  it  has  been  the  fault  of  realism  to  give  the  object  of 
knowledge  an  independence  which  makes  it  meaningless, 
it  can  be  no  sufficient  ground  for  idealism  as  a  positive  doc- 
trine to  refute  a  meaningless  independence.  It  is  not  enough 
to  bring  forward  the  ever-ready  "  Ich  denke,  welches  alle 
meine  Vorstellungen  begleiten  kann,"  or  Royce's  "  Ich  will, 
welches  alle  meine  Vorstellungen  einnehmen  kann."  For  while 
the  idealist  may  say,  after  the  mathematician's  fashion  :  *  Give 
me  any  object,  however  independent,  and  I  will  show  you  an 
ich-denke,  or  an  ich-will,  which  can  take  it  in,'  the  realist  may 
always,  rightly  reply:  'Give  me  any  ich-denke,  or  ich-will, 
however  capacious,  and  I  will  show  you  an  object  whose  being 
is  independent  of  that  very  thought/ 

For  it  is  an  act  of  reflection  which  discovers  the  ich-denke 
as  including  the  object ;  and  by  reflection  upon  your  reflec- 
tion you  rediscover  the  primitive  relation  of  externality  between 
your  mind  and  it's  objects:  you  are  unable  to  make  an  idea 
of  your  idea  except  by  recognizing  something  which  is  not 
that  idea. 

Now  philosophy  can  have  no  permanent  interest  in  a  game 
of  who  shall  speak  last.  While  if  we  decide  the  matter  by 
enquiring  who  has  spoken  first,  the  realist  carries  the  day :  the 
*  first  intention  '  of  the  mind  is  that  it  deals  with  objects  inde- 
pendent of  its  own  thought  for  their  being.  And  no  matter 
how  successful  you  may  be  in  showing  what  interest  the  sub- 
ject may  have  in  the  objects  which  it  finds,  this  interest  is  so 

1  Reprinted  in  part  from  an  article  published  in  The  Philosophical 
Review,  Vol.  xix,  No.  3,  May,  1910,  under  the  title,  "  How  Ideas  reach 
xieality." 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT  559 

far  secondary,  in  respect  to  the  existence  of  the  independent 
objects,  that  it  would  be  precisely  the  same  interest  were 
the  objects  as  different  as  can  be  imagined.  Your  *  ich-will ' 
has  no  power  to  determine  what  the  objects  shall  be ;  it  assumes 
that  they  are  there  to  be  accepted. 

That  the  original  and  naive  attitude  of  the  mind  to  its 
objects  requires  to  be  interpreted,  we  must  assert  with  ideal- 
ism. But  it  seems  clear  to  me  from  considerations  like  the 
foregoing,  that  the  interpretation  cannot  be  so  readily  found 
as  by  taking  the  object  up  bodily  into  the  subject  through 
the  reflective  turn  so  typical  of  idealistic  reasoning.  The 
idealist  reflection  shows  successfully  that  nothing  can  be  real 
for  us  in  which  it  is  not  possible  to  trace  the  mark  of  ourselves 
and  of  our  interests.  But  this  always  leaves  it  possible 
that  the  same  objects  may  bear  other  marks  at  the  same  time ; 
and  that  these  other  marks  are  the  defining  characters  of 
their  objectivity. 

The  whole  life  of  knowledge  can  best  be  understood,  I 
believe,  as  an  intercourse  between  the  self  and  an  independent 
reality.  An  analysis  of  cognitive  experience  should  show 
what  this  means,  and  how  idealism  in  extending  the  I-am  to  the 
entire  scope  of  the  I-think  is  rendering  meaningless  the  con- 
ception of  selfhood.  Knowledge  implies  a  complete  breach, 
at  some  point  or  region,  in  the  wall  of  the  self.  Let  us 
consider  whether  any  such  region  can  be  defined. 

There  are  reasons  for  looking  for  such  a  region  first  within 
physical  experience.  Some  of  these  reasons  have  recently  been 
put  forward  by  M.  Bergson.  Largely  the  same  reasons  were 
touched  upon  by  Kant,  whose  uneasiness  about  empirical  ideal- 
ism came  in  part  from  the  same  quarter ;  and  it  may  not  be  amiss 
to  recall  briefly  these  familiar  considerations.  The  entire 
weight  of  our  judgment  of  Wirklichkeit,  Kant  asserts,  hangs 
upon  Wahrnehmung.1  We  may  make  to  ourselves  concep- 
tions as  we  please  of  things  according  to  the  categories  (for 
1  Postulate  des  empirischen  Denkeiis  uberhaupt. 


560  KNOWLEDGE   OF  THE  INDEPENDENT 

instance,  of  things  so  related  that  the  condition  of  one  thing 
carries  with  it  a  definite  condition  of  the  other  things)  ;  but 
from  these  conceptions  we  can  never  know  what  actual  things 
stand  in  that  relation,  nor  can  we  understand  how  they  can 
be  so  related,  until  we  refer  to  physical  experience.1  Of  our 
knowledge  of  change,  a  strong  point  with  M.  Bergson,  Kant 
says,  that  in  order  to  represent  to  ourselves  Veranderung, 
we  are  obliged  to  make  use  of  Bewegung,  or  change  in  space, 
for  an  illustration :  without  this  we  cannot  make  even  the  gen- 
eral meaning  of  change  clear  to  ourselves,  for  it  is  something 
whose  possibility  is  quite  beyond  the  grasp  of  the  'pure 
understanding.'2  In  sum :  however  much  a  priori  knowledge 
may  be  possible,  we  have  actually  no  working  ideas  at  all 
without  "  Wahrnehmung,  mithin  Empfindung "  ;  and  this 
click  of  sensation  is  required  to  give  the  note  of  reality  to  any 
part  of  the  system  of  experience,  categories  and  all. 

But  as  with  idealists  generally,  so  with  Kant :  while  we  hear 
him  speaking  boldly  about  '  external  reality '  in  quite  realistic 
vein,  we  have  always  to  expect  from  him  the  annulling  stroke, 
"  Yes  —  but  what  do  you  mean  by  external  reality  ?  "  Kant 
has  not  failed  to  express  himself  on  this  point,  most  radically 
of  course  in  the  "  Widerlegung  des  Idealismus."  The  reality 
which  we  know  in  physical  experience,  he  says  in  effect,  is 
outer,  not  only  in  the  two  senses  commonly  accepted  by  idealism, 

1  The  following  sentences  from  the  Allgemeine  Anmerkungen  zum 
System  der  Grundsatze  are  noteworthy,  partly  because  of  the  use  of  the 
expression,   '  objective  Realitat '  instead  of  '  Wirklichkeit,'  and  partly 
because  Kant  is  speaking  of  the  reality  not  simply  of  individual  things 
but  of  the  categories  themselves  —  that  is,  of  things  as  conceived:  "  Es  ist 
etwas  sehr  Bemerkungswiirdiges,  dass  wir  die  Moglichkeit  keines  Dinges 
nach  der  blossen  Categoric  einsehen  konnen,  sondern  immereine  Anschau- 
ung  bei  der  Hand  haben  miissen,  um  an  derselben  die  objective  Realitat 
des  reinen  Verstandesbegriffs  darzulegen.  .  .  .    Noch  merkwiirdiger  aber 
ist,  dass  wir,  um  die  Moglichkeit  der  Dinge  zu  Folge   der  Categorien 
zu  verstehen,  und  also  die  objective  Realitat  der  letzteren  darzutun,  nicht 
bloss  Anschauungen,  sondern  sogar  immer  aeussere  Anschauungen  bediir- 
fen  "  (2d   ed.,  pp.  288,  291). 

2  Allgemeine  Anmerkungen,  etc.,  2d  ed.,  p.  291. 


KNOWLEDGE   OF  THE  INDEPENDENT  661 

namely,  (1)  that  objects  in  space  are  outer  to  each  other,  and 
(2)  that  the  system  of  nature  confers  upon  some  objects 
not  now  present  to  my  perception  the  same  reality  which  is 
attributable  to  these  present :  but  also  in  a  further  sense  which 
not  even  the  personal  ich-denke  can  engulf,  namely,  (3)  that 
here  we  find  this  very  personal  self,  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  peculiar 
individual,  in  the  process  of  being  made.  As  a  knower  —  so 
we  might  interpret  the  argument  —  I  am  as  a  whole  a  being 
with  numerous  peculiarities :  I  have  not  only  a  time-span,  and 
a  time-rate,  but  a  very  definite  and  particular  time-span  and 
time-rate.  And  so  of  many  another  element  in  my  make-up 
—  the  special  tension  of  my  desires,  the  numerical  coefficient 
of  tenacity  in  my  attention,  and  the  like.  Now  if  these  pecu- 
liarities require  explanation,  they  cannot  be  explained  by  any- 
thing within  the  self,  because  they  affect  and  define  the  self  as 
a  whole ;  but  the  truth  is  that  we  know  these  peculiarities  in 
experience,  and  we  know  them  only  by  knowing  something 
else  at  the  same  time,  namely,  an  outer  reality  which  is  meas- 
uring itself  against  myself,  and  whose  point  of  contact  is  found 
in  sensation.  I  have  no  peculiarities  which  are  not  first 
peculiarities  of  something  not-myself.  Whatever  may  be  the 
nature  of  this  reality,  here,  in  sensation,  I  see  as  it  were  my 
own  measurements,  my  own  peculiarities  being  borne  in  to  me. 
The  material  of  sense  is,  in  its  first  moment,  not-self-stuff ; 
and  only  in  its  second  moment,  as  elaborated  in  my  forms  of 
experiencing,  does  it  become  part  of  my  own  being.  The 
physical  judgment,  then,  juts  out  into  the  idealistic  night  —  it 
works  in  a  realm  where  selfhood  is  metabolic,  non-monadic. 

The  essential  point  in  this  position  of  Kant's  might  be 
formulated  in  this  way.  You,  the  idealist,  may  legitimately 
attribute  to,  or  include  within,  any  self,  so  much  as  that  self 
can  understand  and  reproduce,  and  no  more.  The  self,  at  your 
own  rating,  is  to  be  defined  by  mastery,  by  self-consciousness, 
by  self-sufficiency.  And  since  this  power  of  conscious  control 
fades  out  as  it  approaches  the  particular,  and  never  penetrates 
the  particular,  you  must  admit  a  final  limit  to  the  individual 


562  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT 

self  at  the  point  where  experience  becomes  particular,  that  is, 
at  physical  experience.  But  reality  has  always,  as  one  of  its 
factors,  particularity :  whatever  we  think  of  as  real  we  endow 
with  the  qualities  of  the  reality  which  plays  upon  us  in  sensa- 
tion, in  so  far  as  sensation  is  one  of  the  maxima  of  experience, 
setting  the  standard  of  pungency,  definiteness,  completeness  of 
detail,  determinateness  to  the  last  point  of  enquiry,  all-there- 
ness  ;  whatever  we  believe  real  we  regard  as  continuous  in 
these  respects  with  the  reality  thus  presently  touched,  and  in 
such  wise  continuous  that  this  present  moment  is  regarded  as 
real  by  infection  from  or  derivation  from  the  rest  of  reality. 
Thus  the  successive  points  of  our  contact  with  reality  arrange 
themselves  in  what  we  call  a  '  history,'  a  succession  of  moments 
marked  at  every  point  by  these  characters  of  particularity  and 
surprise.  Moreover,  whatever  reality  the  self  has  is  meas- 
ured by  the  prior  and  independent  reality  of  the  objects 
with  which  it  deals ;  nor  do  we  finite  selves  ever  acquire  a 
reality  which  can  subsist  apart  from  our  sensible  objects. 
Dreams,  imaginations,  volitions,  may  be  regarded  as  our  several 
degrees  of  experimentation  in  being  thus  self -sufficiently  real. 
But  with  the  highest  success  of  these  experiments,  namely,  in 
successful  action  known  to  be  such,  our  reality  remains  in  large 
part  centripetal ;  we  continue  to  live  only  by  keeping  open  the 
avenues  through  which  that  independent  being  is  communi- 
cated to  us.  Hence,  in  sum :  the  self  does  not  include  reality. 
Reality  is  beyond  the  self ;  not  a  distinction  within  the  self. 
What  we  can  claim  of  reality  is  a  point  of  contact,  a  surface 
of  osmosis,  in  sensation  :  this  is  the  border  between  the  reality 
original,  and  the  derivative  reality  of  myself ;  it  is  4  the  imme- 
diate '  and  also  '  the  ultimate,'  the  last  point  within  and  the 
first  point  without.  Our  experience  is  metaphysical  (or  per- 
haps better,  metapsychical),  not  phenomenalistic ;  but  of  the 
independent  reality  we  possess  only  the  '  that '  which  we 
immediately  experience  as  we  experience  our  own  limit ;  we 
possess  no  'what'  whatever.  Such  is  the  Kantian  answer  to 
empirical  idealism  of  physical  experience. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT  563 

In  recognizing  sensation  as  a  point  of  vital  contact  with  an 
independent  reality  the  above  argument  seems  to  me  final. 
But  it  is  not  clear  to  me  that  this  reality  is  found  only  in 
sensation  ;  the  irrationalistic  conclusion  is  too  hasty.  It  may 
or  may  not  be  true  that  4  There  is  nothing  in  idea  which  was 
not  previously  in  sense ' ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  4  There  is 
nothing  in  sense  which  cannot  be  taken  up  into  idea.*  From 
which  it  would  follow  that  we  may  have  not  only  sensations, 
but  also  ideas  of  independent  reality.  Whatever  objection 
there  might  be  to  this  doctrine  would  seem  to  come  from 
taking  the  distinction  between  idea  and  sensation,  or  imme- 
diate experience,  in  too  ideal  and  artificial  a  manner.  The 
fixed  gulf  between  idea  and  sensation  is  perhaps  as  great 
as  any  chasm  in  nature  can  be  ;  but  still  it  is  a  natural 
chasm,  and  the  functional  relation  between  the  two  is  like- 
wise natural.  What  this  relation  is  may  be  illustrated  by 
a  political  analogy.1 

The  state  is  an  effort  of  society  to  become  fully  self-conscious 
and  self-controlling ;  its  ideal  is  so  far  identical  with  that  of 
the  individual  mind.  The  state  deals  with  its  natural  data  — 
namely,  its  physical  and  economic  status,  its  customs  and 
traditions  —  just  as  the  self  does  with  its  natural  data,  its 
sensations  and  instincts :  —  it  turns  them  into  ideas.  The 
state  calls  its  own  ideas,  however,  by  the  name  of  4  laws  *  (or 
institutions,  which  are  congeries  of  laws).  Now  a  law  is 
always  either  an  experiment,  or  a  statement  of  the  conditions 
under  which  experiments  must  be  carried  on.  The  rigidity 
and  fixity  of  a  law  is  only  such  as  is  necessary  for  a  satisfactory 

1  It  is  remarkable  that  the  state  furnishes  present  philosophy  with  so 
few  analogies.  For  the  state  is  still,  as  in  the  days  of  Plato,  the  most 
perfect  visible  example  of  the  mind  in  its  dealings  with  reality;  while 
the  things  which  have  happened  in  politics,  and  in  our  understanding  of 
politics,  since  the  time  of  Plato,  ought  to  render  the  analogy  even  more 
fruitful  for  us  than  it  was  for  him.  The  philosophic  value  of  analogy 
as  a  prelude  to  exact  argument,  keeping  the  argument  proportionate 
and  mutual,  has  increased  rather  than  diminished  with  the  multiplication 
of  philosophic  differences. 


564  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT 

experiment.  In  order  to  know  how  life  works  we  must  pro- 
ceed by  assuming  that  we  already  know,  and  holding  to  the 
assumption  until  it  is  proven  wrong.  So  the  ideas  which  we 
individuals  make  are  either  experiments  or  conditions  of 
experiment :  they  are  so  many  ways  of  assuming  that  we 
already  know  reality.  Now  there  are  three  points  in  this 
analogy  which  are  important  for  our  present  enquiry : 

I.  The  law  is  not  something  else  than  the  custom  which  it 
transforms  into  an  institution  :  it  is  the  custom  itself  acquiring 
the  power  of  speech  and  so  of  political  entity. 

When  once  there  exists  such  a  thing  as  a  political  world,  a 
world  wherein  modes  of  action  survive  at  last  only  by  convincing 
some  established  organ  that  they  ought  to  survive,  then  every 
custom  is  bound  in  time  either  to  become  an  institution  or  to 
disappear.  To  be  translated  into  law  is  only  the  process  of 
entering  the  new  status,  of  acquiring  the  new  powers  of  self- 
defence  and  self-maintenance.  So  the  idea  is  not  something 
other  than  the  instinct  or  the  sensation.  It  is  the  identical 
thing,  with  newly  acquired  powers  of  speech  and  of  influence 
upon  action.  To  become  idea  is  the  fate  which  is  imposed 
alike  upon  all  sensations  and  all  instincts  because  of  the  fact 
that  there  is  such  a  forum  in  nature  as  a  '  mind/ 

Hence,  while  we  may  have,  for  example,  ideas  of  things 
static,  and  sensations  or  intuitions  of  things  changing;  we 
have  just  as  truly  sensations  of  things  static  and  ideas  of 
things  changing  (it  being  understood  that  the  sensation 
knows  not  what  it  is  sensation  of).  There  is  no  element 
of  experience  present  to  sensation  which  is  not  also  present 
to  idea.  The  idea  is  the  experience  made  politically  potent 
with  reference  to  other  experiences ;  it  is  the  experience 
freed  from  the  barriers  of  its  historical  context,  able  to  com- 
bine with  other  experiences  as  determinants  of  action,  without 
regard  to  original  position  in  space  or  time.  The  idea  endows 
the  experience  with  a  real  faculty  of  transposition,  akin  to  the 
assumed  revolvableness  and  superposableness  of  the  geometri- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT  665 

cal  magnitudes ;  and  nothing  else  than  this  new  capacity  of 
relation  is  meant  by  the  fact  that  the  experience  appears  to 
a  mind.  Hence,  if  there  be  any  such  thing  as  an  immediate 
experience  of  time,  there  will  necessarily  be  such  a  thing  as 
conceptual  tune  also ;  and  this  conceptual  time  will  not  be  a 
different  time,  but  identically  the  same  time,  with  the  new 
capacity  of  being  regarded  in  segments,  transposable,  compa- 
rable, measurable.1 

In  general,  the  idea  is  the  experience  itself,  made  an  active 
part  of  the  conscious  unity  we  call  a  self,  understood  by  other 
experiences,  and  understanding  them  in  turn. 

II.  All  laws  are  subject  to  error  and  revision  except  the 
laws  which  contain  the  conditions  of  experiment. 

A  law  contains  besides  the  representation  of  a  custom  also  a 
judgment,  or  enactment,  which  sets  that  custom  in  a  positive 
position  in  the  public  life.  The  implied  judgment  may  be 
thus  interpreted :  "  In  this  enactment  the  custom,  or  impulse, 
or  interest,  in  question  is  given  its  rightful  meaning,  force,  and 
bearing  in  the  public  life  in  general."  This  judgment,  which 
is  the  experimental  side  of  the  law,  may  be  in  error ;  and  its 
error  can  be  corrected  only  by  the  same  reality  which  the  law 
undertakes  to  entertain,  namely,  by  custom,  economic  fact  and 
human  nature  as  found  in  the  tendencies,  customs,  and  feelings 
of  the  populace. 

The  constant  flux  and  revision  of  positive  law  is  (supposedly) 
the  renewed  attempt  to  determine  the  true  political  interpre- 
tation of  this  same  reality.  Whatever  scope  there  is  for 
originality  in  public  life,  it  cannot  lie  in  the  invention  of  new 
material  for  that  life,  but  only  in  the  mode  of  voicing  this 
permanent  material.  Hence  while  the  power  of  originality 

1  It  seems  a  wholly  deplorable  misuse  of  language  to  say  that  because 
conceptual  time  or  metrical  time  is  artificial,  it  is  therefore  uot  the  '  real ' 
time.  As  well  say,  because  the  family  as  now  instituted  is  an  artificial 
family,  it  is  not  the  real  family.  It  may  not  be  the  ideal  family,  nor  the 
original  family  ;  but  I  know  not  where  to  look  for  the  '  real '  family  except 
in  the  idea  of  families  —  as  they  are. 


566  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT 

lies  with  the  successful  utterer,  the  source  of  originality  itself 
is  in  the  people,  in  their  dumb  feeling  of  wrong,  and  in  their 
dumb  anticipation  of  the  direction  of  right.  They  are  the 
social  sensation  and  primitive  fact.  They  are  the  primary 
and  permanent  reality  which  in  correcting  the  errors  of  law, 
constitutes  the  goal  and  object  of  all  original  law-making. 

Correspondingly,  in  the  individual  mind,  sensations  and 
feelings  are  the  Demos.  All  ideas  are  subject  to  error,  with 
the  exception  noted :  and  the  reality  which  corrects  them  is  met 
in  sensation.  Further,  as  Bergson  rightly  says,  there  can  be 
no  personal  originality  apart  from  this  Demos  of  experience. 
The  best  originality  of  the  mind  is  but  the  truth  of  nature ;  it 
is  the  master  stroke  of  release,  the  release  of  nature  into  the 
condition  of  idea.  But  what  is  thus  released  is  still  the  same 
reality  which  was  present  to  sensation ;  were  it  any  other  the 
intention  of  the  idea  itself  would  be  defeated. 

III.  Laws  which  contain  the  general  conditions  of  experi- 
ment, that  is,  the  laws  regarding  laws,  law-making,  law-cor- 
recting, and  law-enforcing,  which  together  are  the  constitution 
of  a  state,  are  not  subject  to  error  in  the  same  sense  in  which 
the  positive  law  is  thus  subject,  and  so  not  subject  to  correction 
in  the  same  sense. 

This  part  of  the  law  differs  also  in  this  further  respect  from 
the  positive  law :  That  it  does  not  seem  to  appear  as  part  of 
the  reality  met  with  in  external  sensation,  in  the  original  facts 
of  society :  it  is  in  a  peculiar  way  the  state  itself,  it  is  the  new 
thing  which  has  happened  to  make  all  the  work  of  social  self- 
thinking  in  law  necessary.  We  might  say,  after  the  old 
epistemological  formula:  the  customs  and  predicaments  of 
natural  society  contain  all  the  subject-matter  of  law  —  except 
the  political  constitution  itself. 

Nevertheless,  constitutions  also  are  subject  to  secular  evolu- 
tion. There  are  such  things  as  unnatural  constitutions ;  hence 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  natural  constitution.  Is  it  possible 
that  in  the  datum  of  state  life  there  is  anything  which  might 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT  667 

serve  as  an  original  and  slow  corrective  to  the  constitution? 
May  it  be  that  the  principles  of  administration  that  become 
customary  in  the  family,  and  in  the  collective  meeting  of 
economic  emergencies,  constitute  the  reality,  as  it  were  in  the 
form  of  sensation,  which  the  state  announces  as  idea?  It 
cannot  have  been  otherwise1  and  it  is  not  otherwise:  the  sense 
for  authority  and  the  logic  of  authority  in  elemental  human 
nature  is  authority  for  the  state  in  its  interpretation  of 
authority.  The  constitution  of  the  state  is  the  state  itself, 
and  yet  it  conforms  to  an  external  reality  which  is  part  of 
the  datum  of  its  existence.  The  customs  to  which  it  gives 
political  birth  are  already  in  their  crude  form,  administered 
customs.  Not  only  the  positive  part  of  the  law,  therefore,  but 
the  law  of  the  constitution  itself,  the  relatively  a  priori  part 
of  law,  has  its  external  object  in  experience  to  which  it  must 
conform,  and  from  which  it  receives  continuous  instruction. 

So  also  with  the  mind.  It  has  its  principles  of  experiment 
which  are  not  subject  to  correction  and  error  as  are  its 
common  predicates.  These  principles  of  experiment,  the 
ideas  of  cause,  substance,  and  the  like,  are  the  mind  itself  in 
its  dealings  with  its  sensations.  Nevertheless,  these  also  are 
not  wholly  nor  primarily  internal.  They  are  first  part  of  the 
reality  of  direct  experience.  For  this  experience  is  never 
experience  of  physical  nature  alone :  it  is  experience  of 
administered  nature.  The  mind  has  mind  as  part  of  its  real 
object ;  and  its  ideas  of  ideas  are  not  originally  got  from  views 
of  itself,  but  from  views  of  its  very  external  reality. 

This  is  a  hard  saying ;  but  it  is  the  truth.  The  reality 
which  we  touch  in  sensation  is  nature  known ;  and  hence 
nature  already  endowed  with  the  characters  of  the  idea.  The 
objectivity  of  the  world  extends  to  its  space,  its  causality,  its 
matter,  its  energy ;  and  we  have  no  other  system  of  nature 
than  that  which  we  find  already  established  in  experience. 
This  reality  which  we  experience  and  which  we  know  to  be 
independent,  is  not  an  unknown  being,  giving  rise  to  sensation, 

1  See  especially  on  this  point,  G.  Tarde,  Les  transformations  du  pouvoir. 


568          •    KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT 

and  so  to  physical  experience,  and  so  to  reflexive  experience ; 
but  it  is  a  full-fledged  world  of  nature  and  thought.  Our 
original  experience  is  just  as  truly  an  experience  of  other-mind 
as  it  is  of  other-things ;  and  the  independence  of  the  other-mind, 
and  of  the  other-things,  are  one  independence. 

If  we  are  right,  then,  the  idea  reaches  independent  reality 
in  the  same  way  that  sensation  reaches  it.  Experience  is 
experience  of  independent  being,  known  both  in  sensation  and 
in  idea  at  once. 

So  far,  I  have  tried  to  state  and  illustrate  a  doctrine,  not 
to  prove  it.  But  it  is  capable  of  proof ;  and  the  proof  takes  the 
form  of  the  historic  ontological  argument.  The  ontological 
argument  is  a  way  of  inferring  from  an  idea  to  a  reality. 
"  Because  I  have  a  certain  idea,"  so  it  runs,  "  there  must  be  a 
reality  which  corresponds  to  it."  As  it  stands  it  certainly  can- 
not apply  to  all  ideas.  To  apply  it,  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish 
first  between  the  ideas  which  are  hypothetical  in  character  and 
expect  correction,  and  those  which  are  not  thus  tentative ;  this 
distinction  we  have  already  sketched.  But  to  put  it  strictly  ; 
For  every  idea  which  expects  correction  there  is  another  idea 
determining  how  that  correction  must  come,  and  hence  not 
subject  to  correction  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  sense. 
And  since  there  are  some  ideas  subject  to  correction,  there 
must  also  be  some  ideas  or  idea  not  subject  to  correction  at  all. 
In  the  rough,  these  stable  ideas  are  the  ideas  which  guide  my 
constant  experimenting.  I  do  not  try  here  to  deduce  them, 
nor  to  decide  whether  they  are  one  or  many.  We  know  well 
enough  in  what  direction  to  look  for  them :  they  include  some 
constant  elements  in  the  spatial,  substantial,  causal,  and  social 
aspects  of  my  world.  But  the  point  which  I  wish  to  make,  and 
which  constitutes  the  necessary  amendment  of  the  historic  onto- 
logical argument  is  this  :  These  ideas  guide  me  only  in  so 
far  as  they  are  at  the  same  time  idea  and  experience,  the  idea 
in  question  being  no  other  than  the  experience  recognized. 

For  whatever  may  be  the  variable  and  whatever  may  be  the 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT  669 

constant  elements  in  my  present  idea,  that  portion  of  it  which 
is  still  subject  to  error,  and  so  subject  to  correction,  is  expe- 
rienced in  no  wise  differently  from  that  portion  of  it  which  is 
not  subject  to  correction.  For  example,  in  so  far  as  I  experi- 
ence cause  at  all,  I  experience  it  all  as  one  real  fact,  and  there 
is  no  type  of  error  to  which  this  idea  is  subject  which  can 
refer  me  outside  the  precinct  of  this  same  objective  reality  for 
its  truth.  Hence  we  may  say:  Whatever  idea  I  have  of 
causality,  in  that  sense  there  is  a  real  causal  relation  between 
things.  Or,  because  I  have  an  idea  of  space,  space  is  real. 
Or,  again,  in  whatever  sense  I  can  think,  or  imagine,  or  deny 
the  existence  of  a  fellow-mind,  in  that  sense  the  fellow-mind 
is  real,  and  an  object  of  my  experience. 

If  this  thesis  seems  incredible,  let  one  imagine  what  it  would 
be  to  experience,  in  the  most  satisfactory  manner  conceivable, 
another  mind  —  let  us  say  4  to  be  within  another  mind  ' ;  let 
him  then  compare  the  imagined  experience  with  his  present 
experience  —  and  let  him  state,  if  he  can,  in  what  essential 
respect  these  two  experiences  differ.  Until  such  statement  can 
be  made,  I  need  not  hesitate  to  assert  as  I  have  done,  that  our 
original  experience  of  independent  reality  is  an  experience  of 
nature  known  by  an  independent  knower.  And  now  let  me 
summarize  what  this  independence  amounts  to,  and  in  what 
way  idealism  is  modified  by  admitting  it. 

The  most  general  statement  that  can  be  made  is  this :  That 
real  objects  are  independent  in  whatever  sense  we  can  imagine, 
or  think,  or  enquire  about,  or  deny,  their  independence.  The 
existence  of  l  the  independent  object'  is  in  fact  the  most  gene- 
ral subject-matter  capable  of  ontological  proof.  The  independ- 
ence of  any  object  is  the  independence  which  I  do  in  truth 
experience  in  it ;  and  if  I  wish  to  know  more  nearly  what  that 
experience  amounts  to,  I  can  look  nowhere  but  to  those  ideas 
which  refer  to  that  experience.  Let  me  return  for  a  moment 
to  our  illustration. 

The  independence  of  the  real  object,  in  the  case  of  the  state, 


570  KNOWLEDGE   OF  THE  INDEPENDENT 

means  in  part  this :  That  nature  pursues  her  way  in  spite  of 
the  laws  if  the  laws  are  wrong  ;  but  that  if  the  laws  are  right, 
she  pursues  her  way  more  easily.  If  this  be  true  her  independ- 
ence is  limited.  The  laws,  in  fact,  are  organs  of  nature  at 
the  same  time  that  they  are  organs  of  the  state.  And  because 
this  is  so,  they  learn  to  express  the  very  independence  which 
their  object  maintains.  Nothing  is  more  conspicuous  in  the 
history  of  law  than  its  progress  in  the  definition  of  the  status 
and  technique  of  an  independent  citizenry  ;  it  comes  to  confer 
upon  them  a  kind  of  individual  separateness  of  being  which 
they  originally  neither  had  nor  desired.  In  the  ideas  of  prop- 
erty, in  the  specialization  of  labor,  and  especially  in  the  use 
of  money  (by  which  we  are  given  a  kind  of  solitude  in  the  use 
of  goods  inconceivable  to  early  man) ,  the  state  seems  to  be 
introducing  human  nature  to  its  own  independent  character, 
and  so  giving  rise  to  more  of  that  independent  ferment  to 
which  it  must  submit  its  own  demands. 

And  now,  in  the  case  of  the  idea,  we  have  to  say  likewise, 
that  the  idea  is  at  the  same  time  an  instrument  of  the  self  and 
an  instrument  of  that  very  reality  which  it  is  regarding  as  its 
object ;  and  that  the  idea  has  its  own  way  of  presenting 
to  the  self  the  independence  of  that  object.  How  boldly 
language  has  come  to  attribute  independence  to  the  various 
objects  of  experience ;  how  thoroughly  4  substantive  '  our  nouns 
have  become  in  their  grammatical  relations;  how  unhes- 
itatingly we  confer  a  kind  of  absoluteness  upon  each  thing 
named,  as  if  it  might  exist  in  its  own  right.  And  this 
assumption,  as  it  is  meant,  receives  the  pragmatic  sanc- 
tion :  it  works ;  it  continues  to  work  better  as  the  world 
grows  old ;  and  it  alone  works.  It  works  because  it  is  the 
truth  of  reality  ;  because  it  successfully  expresses  not  alone  the 
ultimate  condition  of  all  experiment,  trial,  and  error,  but  at 
the  same  time  the  most  primitive  fact  of  experience  itself  — 
the  experience  of  that  not-myself  which  is  permanently  mak- 
ing me.  And  in  this  sense,  rather  than  in  the  reflective  sense, 
the  truth  of  nature,  even  in  her  independence,  is  to  be  found 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT  571 

in  the  idea,  and  in  the  idea  alone.  The  real  independence  of  the 
object  is  the  independence  which  I  learn  to  attribute  to  it ;  it 
being  well  understood  that  it  is  not  a  matter  of  my  choice 
whether  or  not  I  do  thus  attribute  independence  to  my  objects. 
The  independence  is  a  matter  of  experience  first,  and  of  idea 
afterward.  But  now,  more  specifically,  what  does  this  inde- 
pendence mean  ? 

It  means,  in  the  first  place,  priority  of  being.  Not  neces- 
sarily temporal  priority  (though  this  is  part  of  it),  but  orig- 
inality ;  the  kind  of  priority  which  I  instantly  experience  as 
I  find  myself  being  made.  The  real  is  the  source  of  myself, 
both  as  particular  being  through  my  historical  context,  and 
as  a  being  with  ideas.  In  this  experience,  I  see  beyond 
the  self  that  is  being  made :  my  knowledge  runs  out  in  advance 
of  my  existence,  and  lays  hold  on  what  I  am  not.  It  is  at  this 
point  that  idealism,  if  we  have  been  right  in  this  argument,  will 
have  to  suffer  restatement.  We  cannot  identify  I-am  with 
I-think.  It  is  possible  to  experience  and  to  think  being  which 
is  prior  to  me,  which  is  in  reality  not-me.  The  I-think  has  a 
scope  which  exceeds  the  I-am  by  one  remove. 

True,  there  is  nothing  in  what  I-think  which  can  be  excluded 
from  me ;  what  I  know  is  in  the  process  of  becoming  me,  in 
so  far  as  I  am  able  to  appropriate  it.  The  I-think  represents 
the  explorative,  reaching-over  function  of  my  being  ;  it  is  my 
spiritual  metabolism  —  by  it  I  take  root  in  the  soil  and  breathe 
in  the  air  of  the  conscious  world  beyond,  and  assimilate  it  to 
myself.  Thus  though  all  reality  be  in  truth  spiritual,  the 
finite  knower  knows  realistically ;  the  being  of  the  object  is 
prior  to  his  own. 

In  the  second  place,  independence  means  necessity  and 
authority.  The  reality  is  that  which,  in  knowing,  I  cannot 
change,  that  which  corrects  my  errors,  and  that  which  deter- 
mines how  error  shall  be  corrected.  My  objects  as  they  come 
to  me  in  history  are  my  fate.  My  general  *  will  to  be  rational ' 
or  to '  accept  the  will  of  the  world '  has  no  force  to  determine 


572  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  INDEPENDENT 

what  they  shall  be.  My  attitude  to  reality  as  it  particularly 
is  (except  for  my  will  that  there  be  a  particular  reality)  is  not 
one  of  constructive  willing,  but  one  of  refusing  to  reject ;  and 
I  continue  to  refuse  to  reject,  that  is,  to  4  hope'  or  to  *  believe,' 
in  part  because  I  know  the  ontological  relation  between  my  will 
and  the  will  of  the  whole.  This  knowledge  does  not  abolish 
the  authority  of  facts ;  it  makes  me  willing  to  accept  that 
authority  and  to  win  what  power  is  possible  to  me  through 
obedience  thereto. 

There  is  a  third  aspect  of  the  independence  of  objects 
which  is  a  mutual  (commutative)  independence,  and  which  is 
best  illustrated  by  looking  at  our  state  from  the  other  end. 
Given  a  sovereign,  the  several  inhabitants  of  a  territory  are 
more  independent  of  each  other  than  before,  or  else  less  so. 
That  is,  —  some  distant  ones  are  brought  into  a  significance 
which  they  had  otherwise  absolutely  lacked ;  while  the  adja- 
cent ones  are  able  to  ignore  the  proximity  of  one  another,  as 
otherwise  would  be  impossible.  Perfect  sovereignty  makes 
neighborhood  an  indifferent  relation.  The  independence  of 
each  other  which  citizens  thus  acquire  is  the  counterpart  of 
the  nearest  approach  to  a  realistic  independence  which  the 
world  of  knowledge  can  show.  The  kind  of  independence, 
namely,  which  is  visible  in  particular  facts,  items  of  informa- 
tion in  general,  contents  of  purely  arbitrary  memory.  These 
fragments  bear  upon  me  only  by  way  of  the  general  fact  of 
sovereignty,  the  reality  to  which  we  belong  in  common ;  they 
come  but  vaguely,  distantly,  and  by  virtue  of  the  habitualness 
of  my  mind,  under  the  scope  of  my  will.  Thus  arises  the  third 
meaning  which  independence  may  have:  To  say  that  an 
object  is  independent  of  me  may  be  as  in  (1)  and  (2)  the 
other  way  of  saying  that  I  am  dependent  upon  it ;  or  it  may 
mean  (3)  that  the  object  has  no  bearing  upon  my  other  present 
objects  except  through  the  distant  medium  of  '  the  reality/ 
In  this  tertiary  and  derived  sense,  independence  of  me  means 
independence  of  myself  as  an  object  to  myself,  and  is  mutual. 
The  chair  which  I  do  not  want  I  can  put  out  of  the  room 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE   INDEPENDENT  573 

without  making  any  significant  difference  either  to  the  chair 
or  to  the  other  chairs  in  the  room,  or  to  my  own  empirical  self. 
This  is  the  freedom  of  parts  with  reference  to  each  other, 
which  is  due  to  their  common  dependence  upon  some  absolute 
third. 

To  sum  up  :  The  independence  of  the  object  is  such  as  is 
correlative  to  my  various  types  of  dependence,  and  to  my  pecu- 
liar type  of  independence.  The  idealist  is  always  right  in 
turning  upon  the  realist  with  the  demand:  '  But  what  do  you 
mean  by  independence  ?  "  The  realist  is  right  in  insisting  that 
an  allegation  of  meaning  in  answer  to  the  question  does  not 
swallow  the  object  up  into  the  subject,  the  distinction  between 
what  I  am  and  what  I  think  being  a  persistent  one  for  finite 
subjects.  The  force  of  the  idealistic  criticism  of  realistic 
epistemology  is  confined,  so  far,  to  showing  up  inconsistency 
or  impossibility  of  thought.  And  we  return  thus  to  Spinoza's 
definition  of  substance  as  'That  which  is  by  itself  and  is 
conceived  by  itself ' ;  not  because  logic  controls  Nature,  but 
because  logic  is  Nature,  in  the  only  form  in  which  Nature  can 
now  be  approached  by  human  consciousness. 


IV 

NOTE  ON  LEUBA'S  THEORY  OF  THE   NATURE   OF 
THE  MYSTIC'S   LOVE  OF   GOD 

IT  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  principle  of  alternation 
that  I  would  judge  the  theory  of  Leuba,  who  in  several 
well-known  articles  1  has  done  much  to  supply  the  lack  of  a 
psychology  of  the  mystic's  motive.  He  has  rightly  distin- 
guished the  two  sides  of  this  motive.  The  ambitious  element 
appears  to  him  as  a  fixed  necessity  for  moral  perfection,  a 
"  tendency  to  the  universalization  of  action,"  amounting  in  some 
persons  almost  to  hyperaesthesia  of  the  moral  sensibility.  The 
element  of  love  on  the  other  hand  appears  to  him  under  a  very 
earthly  guise,  as  a  need  for  satisfying  the  instinctive  affections, 
a  need  for  "  organic  enjoyment,"  in  which  a  thwarted  human 
desire  finds  an  ideal  route  to  its  satisfaction.  The  divine  love, 
on  this  basis,  is  a  form  of  the  pursuit  of  subjective  pleasure  ; 
no  wonder  that  it  seems  to  Leuba  to  be  inconsistent  with  that 
other  fundamental  motive,  the  moral  ambition  so  often  expressed 
in  the  severe  asceticism  of  the  mystic's  self -discipline ;  no 
wonder  that  the  mystic's  development  is  read  by  him  as  an 
elimination  of  Eros,  a  conquering  of  love,  "  a  reconstitution  of 
the  individual  under  the  influence  of  the  disposition  toward 
universalized  action,  wherein  he  may  reach  entire  deliverance 
from  the  desires  of  the  natural  man." 

I  cannot  but  believe  that  this  apparent  conflict  and  incom- 
patibility of  motive  has  been  created  by  Leuba  himself,  through 
the  view  he  takes  of  the  nature  of  the  divine  love.  At  the 
same  time  Leuba  is  fundamentally  right  in  recording  the  con- 

1  Revue  philosophique,  vol.  54  (1902,  n),  pp.  1  ff.  and  441  ff.;  vol. 
67  (1904,  i),  pp.  70  ff.    Mind,  N.  8.,  vol.  14  (1905),  pp,  15-27,  etc. 


LEUBA'S  THEORY  676 

trast  between  these  two  motives :  incompatible  they  are  not, 
but  antithetical  they  surely  are.  And  it  is  easy  for  the 
antithesis  to  become  an  antagonism  :  on  the  organic  level,  love 
and  ambition  do  look  in  opposite  directions.  The  practically 
obvious  thing  about  love  is  that  one  turns  away  from  work ; 
and  the  motive  which  is  at  bottom  a  wholly  moral  demand  for 
the  renewal  of  the  worth  of  work  may  easily  be  mistaken  for 
a  denial  of  that  worth  :  love,  ignoring  its  own  nature  as 
transmuted  ambition,  enters  into  a  false  competition  with  duty. 
And  duty  may  respond  by  forgetting  that  it  is  nothing  but 
transmuted  love.  Thus  the  antithesis  becomes  a  practical 
hostility  or  opposition,  creating  falsely  partisan  moral  philos- 
ophies, rigoristic  on  one  hand,  epicurean  on  the  other. 

This  apparent  conflict  which  is  evident  in  things  partial  is 
also  possible  in  things  total :  it  entangles  the  mystic  not  less 
and  not  more  than  other  men.  The  love  of  God  then  becomes 
a  path  of  dissipation,  antagonizing  moral  ambition :  but  it  is 
not  true  that  this  is  its  natural  character.  We  are  bound  to 
define  the  motive  of  mysticism  by  its  normal  condition,  if  it 
has  one  —  even  though  this  normal  condition  has  never  yet 
been  realized.  And  we  are  still  more  bound  to  give  the  mystics 
credit  for  their  best  achievements,  and  for  their  deepest  dis- 
criminations. No  one  who  reads  the  mystics  can  suppose  that 
they  have  been  unaware  of  precisely  this  danger ;  nor  that 
they  have  been  undiligent  in  guarding  against  it.  They  have 
seen,  and  precisely  stated,  the  truth  that  the  highest  possi- 
bilities of  experience  are  also  the  most  perilous.  Let  me 
quote  a  passage  from  Tauler  on  this  point : 

There  are  those  who  have  lost  their  way  in  the  spiritual  life, 
because  they  have  undertaken  to  live  this  life  after  their  own  conceit, 
without  the  direction  of  God.  They  have  a  desire  to  taste  inward 
spiritual  comfort ;  but  this  desire  (not  wholly  freed  from  subjectivity) 
becomes  in  them  a  veritable  spiritual  unchastity :  for  it  is  nothing 
other  than  a  natural  inclination  or  love  which  is  bent  and  crooked 
inward  into  itself,  seeking  in  reality  its  own  comfortableness. 
Outwardly,  these  two  types  of  love,  the  natural  and  the  divine,  are 


576  LEUBA'S  THEORY 

as  like  as  two  hairs  of  the  head ;  but  in  their  inward  meaning  they 
are  wholly  alien.  For  the  true  lover  of  God  offers  himself  up  wholly, 
together  with  everything  he  has  and  is  capable  of ;  and  cannot 
tolerate  the  thought  of  any  other  appeasement  of  his  longing  than 
the  ineffable  Good,  which  is  God  himself.  The  others  fix  their 
minds  upon  the  blessings  and  sweets  which  they  demand  from  God, 
and  if  they  fail  to  get  them  they  are  beside  themselves  with  impatience 
and  violent  clamor.  What  they  desire  is  a  type  of  rest  and  comfort 
naturally  pleasing  to  all  creatures  :  and  such  an  experience  is  possible 
to  any  person  who  knows  the  art  of  emptying  himself  of  imaginations 
and  impulses.  Let  a  man  but  separate  himself  from  all  contingencies 
and  from  all  works,  and  there  will  come  over  him  in  this  state  of  empti- 
ness a  peace  which  is  very  great,  lovely,  and  agreeable,  and  which  is 
in  itself  no  sin  since  it  is  part  of  our  human  nature.  But  when  it 
is  taken  for  a  veritable  possessing  of  God,  or  unity  with  God,  then  it 
is  a  sin ;  for  it  is  in  reality  nothing  else  than  a  state  of  thorough 
passivity  and  apathy  untouched  by  the  power  from  on  high,  which 
any  man  can  attain  without  special  grace  of  God.  It  is  a  purely 
negative  state  from  which  (if  one  in  arrogance  calls  it  divine)  nothing 
follows  but  blindness,  failure  of  understanding,  and  a  disinclination 
to  be  governed  by  the  rules  of  ordinary  righteousness.1 

It  has  never  been  easy  for  human  nature  to  sustain  its  love 
at  the  level  of  true  worship;  it  has  never  been  easy  to  keep 
integrity  in  presence  of  that  seductive  movement  of  reflection 
which  seizes  upon  an  experience  and  forgets  its  first  intention  ; 
there  is  a  statistical  certainty  of  some  lapse,  and  this,  if 
Delacroix  is  right  is  precisely  the  thing  which  necessitates  the 
long  agonies  of  the  second  stadium  of  the  mystic's  life  cycle. 
The  important  point,  however,  for  a  fair  scientific  theory  is 
this :  that  mysticism  has  its  own  corrective  within  itself.  It 
recurs  to  the  essential  identity  of  its  love  and  its  ambition. 

To  know  that  the  love  of  God  is  of  the  same  substance  with 
moral  ambition  decides  some  questions  about  the  psychological 
nature  of  that  love.  But  it  does  not  decide  the  worth  of 
Leuba's  thesis  that  it  has  close  psychological  kinship  with 
the  love  of  man  and  woman.  It  would  be  necessary  in  a 

1  Freely  taken  from  Predigten,  n,  pp.  335-339  (ed.  1841). 


LEUBA'S  THEORY  577 

complete  theory  to  show  the  wide  differences  of  these  two  as 
well  as  their  striking  likenesses ;  but  there  is  no  more  important 
scientific  task  than  to  define  with  accuracy  the  extent  of  this 
likeness  so  universally  recognized  in  literature  and  history,  in 
the  imagery  of  the  mystics  themselves.  To  my  mind  it  is  the 
principle  of  alternation  which  defines  this  likeness.  Beyond 
doubt,  the  mystic's  exaltation  sweeps  up  into  its  own  current 
whatever  in  the  thousand-fold  alternate  swingings  of  human 
nature  moves  in  its  own  direction,  —  not  as  their  product  but 
as  their  master.  It  would  indeed  be  surprising  if  the  sexual 
nature  of  man,  with  its  movement  away  from  the  sphere  of 
deeds  to  the  sphere  of  substance,  with  its  strong  tide  away 
from  the  particular  to  the  over-individual  and  racial,  with  its 
suggestion  of  total,  infinite,  and  yet  immediate  worth,  did  not 
more  quickly  and  completely  than  any  other  human  impulse 
discover  in  worship  its  ultimate  meaning  and  law.  This  must 
be  the  case :  not  because  the  love  of  God  is  at  bottom  sexual 
love,  but  because  sexual  love  is  potentially  love  of  the  divine. 
As  to  the  details  of  Leuba's  theory,  I  leave  them  to  be  dealt 
with  by  his  competent  critic,  De  Montmorand.1  But  the  main 
criticism  to  be  passed  upon  that  theory  is  only  that  it  is  not 
the  whole  truth  ;  and  in  this  case  anything  short  of  the  whole 
truth  is  untrue. 

The  whole  truth  lies  surely  in  this  direction  —  that  all  of 
our  human  impulses  and  loves  are  akin.  And  the  psychology 
of  mysticism  waits  less  for  an  analysis  of  the  love  of  God  than 
for  an  analysis  of  all  other  human  desires.  It  is  not  this  love 
but  those  that  need  explanation.  The  love  of  God  is  the  one 
natural  instinct  of  man  :  worship  is  the  one  deed  which  answers 
as  an  echo  all  other  deeds  in  history.  Upon  one  point  the 
psychologies  of  Plato,  Augustine,  and  Spinoza  are  agreed : 
that  all  special  desires  are  refracted  desires  for  the  Absolute 
Good.  We  moderns  with  superior  analysis  have  not  yet 
regained  in  our  own  tongue  these  results.  We  need  to  know 

i  Revue  philosophique,  vol.  66  (1903),  pp.  382  ff.;  vol.  57  (1904), 
pp.  242  ff.;  vol.  58  (1904),  pp.  602  ff. ;  vol.  60  (1905),  pp.  1  ff. 


578  LEUBA'S   THEORY 

the  "laws  of  the  transformation  and  equivalence "  of  desires 
and  values :  then  we  shall  see  how  they  may  be  one  and  all,  not 
suppressed  by,  but  paid  over  into  the  all-consuming  passion 
of  religion.  Both  Leuba  and  his  critic  fall  into  the  error 
of  supposing  that  in  the  perfecting  of  mysticism  some  side 
of  human  nature  is  put  under,  some  dissociation  or  amnesia 
has  been  accomplished,  so  that  the  "  lower  centers "  never 
again  assert  themselves.  All  this  seems  foreign  to  the  facts. 
For  all  reasons  I  should  prefer  to  think  that  in  mysticism  the 
needs  of  sex,  together  with  all  other  needs,  are  understood 
and  satisfied ;  that  all  the  hundred  voices  of  human  desire 
are  here  brought  to  unison.  With  this  understanding  and  not 
otherwise  can  I  see  how  religion  is  to  fulfil  its  assumed  func- 
tions :  to  keep  from  mutual  estrangement  the  primitive  in  us 
and  the  far-civilized ;  to  offer  individual  souls  —  malformed 
in  the  specializations  of  our  social  order,  or  mutilated  in  its 
accidents  — the  possibility  of  complete  personality ;  to  unify 
in  wish  and  will,  as  reason  does  in  principle,  the  whole  moral 
existence  of  man. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Italics  indicate  words  or  phrases  used  in  this  hook  with  special  meanings. 


ABSOLUTE,  the,  vi,  183-206,  331,  401, 

415, 435, 456,  472,  473  f.,  511. 
Abstract  universal,  417  f.,  434. 
Adolescence,  533. 
Agnosticism,  192. 
Ahura  Mazda,  329. 
Allegory,  see  Symbol. 
Alternation,  principle  of,  5, 99,  395,  396, 

405-427,  450  n.,  458,  474,  575. 
Altruism  (see  also  Egoism),  136,  496  ff., 

509. 
Ambition,  359,  360,  367,  414,  422,  517, 

574  f. 

Analogy,  389,  390,  392,  563  n. 
Ancestor  worship,  231-232. 
Anger,  127  n.,  534. 
Angier,  R.  P.,  529  n. 
Animism,  230,  300,  317. 
Anselra,  307. 
Antagonism,  509. 
Anticipation  of  attainment  of  arts,  30, 

31, 33, 198,  221  ff.,  238, 428-434, 437- 

439,  512. 

Antinomianism,  364,  400. 
Apperceptive  mass,  127  f.,  285,  527. 
Appreciation,  judgments  of  (see  also 

Value),  68,  539. 
Apriori,  the  concrete,  278,  437  n. 
Aristotle,  433. 
Artificiality,  the  artificial  self,  413  ff., 

420n.,  430, 431  f .,  434, 438, 454,  527  f . 
Arts,  the,    14-26,   31,   103,  138,   150, 

407  ff.,  427,  462-483,  513. 
Asceticism,  372-374,  509. 
Association,  222  f. 
Atheism,  225  f.,  323. 
Attainment,  religious,  51,  53,  65,  428- 

441.    See    'anticipation    of    attain- 
ment.' 

Augustine,  75,  307,  577. 
Attention,  411  n.,  412  f.,  527  ff.,  549. 
Authority,  xi,  30,  229-230,  429,  571. 
Automatism,  425. 
Aversion,  532. 

BAOKHOT,  455,  520. 
Baldwin,  247. 


Beauty,  256,  420  f.,  451  f.,  491  f. 
Being  and  quality  (see  also  Value),  ch. 

xi,  also  pp.  203  f.,  331,  464  n. 
Bennett,  C.  A.,  403  n. 
Bergson,  x,  25,  80  n.,  82-88,  122,  134, 

559,  560,  566. 
Berkeley,  194,  195,  246. 
Bernard,  361. 
Biology,  biological  method,  44-46,47, 

542-546;  in  theory  of  ideas,  113  ff., 

120,  122,  235,  258,  543-557. 
Body  (see  also  Mind  and  Body),  258, 

333,  372. 

Boehme,  Jacob,  363,  479. 
Bonaventura,  371. 
Brahm,  102,  185,  186,  329. 
Brahmanism,  333. 
Brinton,  234. 
Bruno,  361. 
Buddha,  Buddhism,  5,  333,  337,  512, 

520. 

CATHERINE  OF  SIENA,  375. 
Causality,  305,  307,  313,  513. 
Certainty,  30  f .,  295  f .,  361  f .,  448  n.  f., 

454-456,  512. 

Chance  (see  also  Pluralism,  Probabil- 
ity), 167,  462,  503. 
Change,  84-86,  186-188,  560. 
Changeless,  the,  183  ff. 
Character,  134,  147,  190,  203,  255,463, 

527. 

Charity,  199. 
Chesterton,  260. 
Christ.    Christianity    (see    also    Jesus 

Christ),  151,  224,  324,  330,  334,  337, 

352,  378,  513,  520-524. 
Coenesthesia,  392  f. 
Commitment,  509. 
Communication,   logic  of,   246,  272  f., 

294  ;  of  feeling,  77. 
Concrete  apriori,  see  Apriori. 
Concrete  universal,  406,  407,  413. 
Conscience  (see  also  Duty,  Morality, 

Right),  551-557. 
Contemplation,  383. 
Continuity  (see  also  Discontinuity,  Like- 


582 


INDEX 


ness,   Novelty,    Tradition),    478  ff., 

484. 

Convention,  400,  417. 
Conversion,  73,  383. 
Cosmological  argument,  305. 
Cosmology,  516. 
Cowper,  426. 
Creation,  286,  287,  308,  440,  457,  485, 

561  f. 
Creativity  (see  also  Originality),  xvii, 

23-26,  149, 150-162, 167,  203,  205  f., 

296,  299,  364, 440, 457-460,  462-484, 

489. 
Creed  (see   also   Dogma,   Knowledge, 

Certainty),  3,  37,  39,  42,  70,  73,  139, 

150. 

Critical  attitude,  416,  432,  532. 
Criticism,  philosophical,  48. 

DEATH,  231. 

Deduction,  312,  477. 

Deification,  388,  512. 

Delacroix,  394,  425  f.,  449  n.,  576. 

Descartes,  191  f.,  202,  246,  276,  314. 

Detachment  from  particulars  (see  also 
Stoicism),  487  f.,  493  ff.,  509. 

Dialectic,  60,  284,  309,  322  ff.,  412, 
460. 

Difference,  source  of  (see  also  Creativ- 
ity), 203,  481. 

Disconnection,  Discontinuity,  180, 
398  ff.,  429. 

Dogma,  457  f.,  466. 

Dualism,  172,  406. 

Duty  (see  also  Conscience),  251,  414, 
417,  427,  440,  556,  575. 

ECKHABT,  371,  375,  391  n.,  430. 

Ecstasy,  536. 

Education,  religious  (see  also  Religion, 
propagation  of),  522. 

Egoism,  and  altruism,  126,  136. 

Egoistic  revelation,  430  n. 

Egypt,  religion  of,  232. 

Emerson,  258,  333,  398  f .,  459. 

Emotion,  see  Feeling,  Passion. 

Empiricism  (see  also  Experience  .Know- 
ledge), xvii,  112,  283,  295,  387  n. 

Energy,  127 ;  potential,  546,  551,  554  f . 

Enthusiasm,  509. 

Epictetus,  377,  452. 

Error,  277, 291,  292, 297, 320, 411, 459  f ., 
565  ff. 

Esoteric,  459. 

Evanescence  of  religious  insight,  144; 
and  of  social  experience,  243. 

Evil,  134,  174  ff.,  200,  203,  205,  208, 
218-226,  440,  485-514,  551. 


Evolution,  mental,  see  Knowledge, 
growth  of ;  see  also  Religion,  evolu- 
tion of. 

Experience,  215,  280,  281,  303,  310; 
as  source  of  religious  knowledge, 
see  Knowledge. 

Explanation,  87,  126,  197,  252,  540. 

FACT,  106,  137,  485,  515. 

Faculty,  special,  62,  370  f . 

Faith,  31,  62,  144,  148,  150,  249  f.,  440, 
513. 

Fate,  152,  181,  194,  334,  485,  516. 

Fatigue,  415-417,  536. 

Fear,  72,  137,  145,  233,  234,  362. 

Fechner,  468  f.,  470,  473. 

Feeling  (see  also  Faith,  Fear,  Love, 
Passion,  Worship),  33,  S4-1S8  (esp. 
64  f.,  68  n  f.,  137),  148,  400,  437; 
religion  of,  49;  self -interpretation, 
mistaken,  74. 

Fenelon,  378  n.,  385,  395  n.  f. 

Fetich,  239. 

Fichte,  147,  158,  297,  333,  495. 

Finite  situation,  50. 

Forgiveness,  177, 180,  383,  523. 

Form  and  matter,  197,  198,  406,  452- 
455. 

Fortune  (see  also  Fate,  History,  Provi- 
dence), 485  ff.,  515  ff. 

Francois  de  Sales,  423  n. 

Freedom  (see  also  Necessity),  xii,  xvi, 
23,  24,  152,  173,  174,  299,  365,  412- 
414,415  n.,  420,  437,483,  542,  546  n. 

Friendship,  140,  452,  507. 

GENIUS,  448,  476,  483. 

God,  vi,  52,  205,  206-226,  295  f. ;  finite 
and  infinite,  225-226  ;  idea  of,  139, 
141  f.,  146,  151,  152,  161,  216  f., 
223  f .,  294  f .,  299,  320-336, 459, 481  f . ; 
incarnate,  see  Incarnation;  love  of, 
see  Love  of  God;  personality,  226, 
323-336 ;  proofs  of,  302  ff. ;  value  of, 
136,  207-226 ;  will  of,  7,  498,  501 ; 
work  of,  xv,  6,  208  ff.,  440,  445-446, 
515-524. 

Gods  and  spirits,  318  f. 

Godfernaux,  393  n. 

Good  (see  also  Happiness,  Pleasure, 
Right,  Value),  195-197,  205, 405, 410, 
413,  415  f.,  464,  577. 

Greek  religion,  329,  334. 

Grief  (see  also  Evil,  Sorrow,  Pain),  200, 
223. 

Groups,  closed,  self -perpetuating,  463- 
465,  518,  540,  550. 

Guyon,  Madame,  360,  394,  425  f.,  536. 


INDEX 


HARTMANN,  E.  von,  38,  638. 

Happiness,  195,  210,217-226,365,485- 
514. 

Hebrew  religion,  232,  329. 

Hegel,  x,  xii,  155,  195,  307,  503,  538. 

Hell,  xiv,  47,  170,  268. 

Henotheism,  325. 

Herbert,  George,  239. 

Historical  religion,  320,  446,  448, 
519  ff. 

Historic  virtues,  the,  522  f. 

History  (see  also  Time),  562 ;  philoso- 
phy of,  chh.  ii,  xxxi-xxxiii,  and  pp. 
406  f .,  446 ;  (see  also  Religion,  evolu- 
tion of);  principles  of  interpretation, 
41,  42,  57,  58,  180. 

Hobbes,  504. 

Hoffding,  H.,  18,  38,  91  f.,  353  n. 

Holy  places,  239. 

Holy  Spirit,  441,  478. 

Horace,  506. 

Howison,  290,  503. 

Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  379  n. 

Hume,  277  f. 

Hypothesis,  214,  276  £.,  476. 

IDEA,  19,  44,  45-48,  63,  79-155,  198, 
201  f.,  235,  258, 275-278,  307 f.,  315  f., 
450  f.,  543-546,  563-573;  action  the- 
ory of,  113  ff. ;  circle-diagrams,  80  f., 
101 ;  finitude  and  infinitude  of,  90  ff. ; 
functions  of,  80,  94,  110,  112;  inde- 
pendence of  feeling,  110  ff. ;  mean- 
ing, external,  117ff. ;  of  whole,  see 
Whole  idea  ;  permanence,  HOf. ;  rig- 
idity and  change,  79  ff. ;  system,  111, 
119;  vividness,  117,546. 

Idealism,  v,  x-xx,  44,  157-162,  169  f., 
195,  209,  289  f.,  314,  437 n.,  558-572. 

Identity,  individual  (see  also  Personal- 
ity, Self),  119,  260,  264. 

Ignorance,  knowledge  of,  235. 

Illumination,  388,  449  n. 

Imagination,  533,  562. 

Imitation,  403,  518  f. 

Immanence,  326  ff.,  406. 

Immediacy,  Immediate,  316,  355,  357, 
390,  439  f.,  448  n.  f. 

Immortality,  Future  Life  (see  also  Self- 
preservation),  49  f.,  52,  141,  144,  195, 
210  f.,  232,  264,  366,  512,  514,  520  f . 

Incarnation,  211,  321,  330,  515-524. 

Independence,  23,  HOff.,  12Q,1S9-162, 
273,  284,  314,  558-572. 

Individual,  Individuality  (see  also  Per- 
sonality, Self),  161, 255,417ff.,430ff., 
445. 

Indra,102. 


Induction,  237,  408,  409,  474^77. 
Ineffable,  Ineff ability  (see   also   My»- 

tery),  19,  348,  353,  363,  398. 
Infallibility,  455. 
Infinite,  19,  236,  376. 
Inge,  430. 

Inspiration,  8,426,  445,  481,462-484. 
Institution,  religious,  519  ff. 
Instinct,  24  f.,  49,  50,  88,  128  f.,  151, 

323,  341,  358,  420,  474, 483, 504, 527, 

544  ff.,  551  f. 

Intellect  (see  also  Idea),  82,  98,  99. 
Interest,  see  Pleasure,  Value,  Will. 
International  law  and  religion,  521. 
Irrelevant  universal,  193,  196,  200-221, 

236-238. 
Islam,  337,  520. 

JAMES,  WILLIAM,  38, 89,  184,  185,  220r 

247,  362  f.,  390,  428,  503,  537. 
Janet,  537. 

Jesus  Christ,  200,  205,  331,  357,  512. 
Jevons,  F.  B-,  233  n.,  458. 
Justice,  175-179,  205. 

KANT,  37,  60,  193, 195,  226,  276,  303, 
420  n.,  559-562. 

Karma,  333. 

Knowledge,  191 ;  and  the  knowing  pro- 
cess, 408-411  n.,  457  f.;  experience 
as  source  of,  154,  215,  217,  229-312  ; 
growth  of,  5,  95-99, 120,  458,  478  f.  ; 
in  religion,  peculiar  difficulty  of,  32, 
39,  51-54,  56-63,  74,  91,  98,  100, 
142—144, 149 ;  in  religion,  how  possi- 
ble (see  also  Revelation),  vii,  viii, 
xiv,  32,  37-52,  98,  109, 154  ff.,  229- 
337  ;  love  of,  see  Reality,  interest  in ; 
of  other  minds,  see  Social  experi- 
ence ;  scientific  and  religious,  3,  31, 
61,  98,  151,  409  n.,  452,  513 ;  theory 
of,  251-315,  558-573. 

LAO  TZE,  205, 224. 

Law,  as  God,  334-336. 

Leibniz,  246,  274  f. 

Leuba,  574-578. 

Likeness,  475,  481. 

Lippert,  11,  49. 

Literality  in  Religion,  3,  103,  149,  150, 

298,  301  f,  422,  515. 
Locke,  48,  242,  252. 
Love,  135,  152,  206,  255  f.,  432  f.,  437, 

451,  507,  535,  577. 
Love  of  God,  123, 341,  &59,  361,  366  f., 

375,  422-444,  435  f.,  513,  S74-57& 
Love  of  life,  202,  436,  437,  438. 
Lovejoy,  A.  O.,  324  n. 


584 


INDEX 


Loyalty,  142,  148,  152,  226,  436-440, 

499. 

Loyola,  361. 
Luther,  361,  383. 

MAETERLINCK,  487  £.,  495,  510. 

Magic,  237. 

Materialism,  417,  539  n. 

McDougall,  W.,  335. 

McTaggart,  165,  207-226. 

Mediaeval,  Mediaevalism,  378  n.,  480. 

Mediation,  Mediator  (see  also  Author- 
ity, Historical  religion,  Immediate), 
xii,  xix,  186,  230,  356  f.,  377,  446. 

Meditation,  372,  376  ff. 

Metapathy,  72. 

Metaphysics,  209  f.,  214-216. 

Mind  and  body  (seo  also  Body),  201, 
261-265,  415, 540-543,  548. 

Miracle,  148,  432,  517. 

Mohammed  (see  also  Islam),  512. 

Molinos,  384. 

Monadism,  244,  275,  297. 

Monism,  166-182,  298,  359. 

Monotheism,  324-326. 

Mood,  550. 

Moral  Irony,  494. 

Morals  and  Religion,  20,  31, 51, 75,  146, 
150, 166, 175,  177,  225,  296,  330-332, 
341,  365,  418,  422-424,  427,  482  f., 
498,  512  f.,  552,  556,  574-578. 

Miinsterberg,  158,  250,  262  n.,  288  n. 

Mystery  (see  also  Ineffable),  231,  233, 
235  f.,  398. 

Mystics,  Mysticism  (see  also  Negative 
Aspect,  Negative  Path),  xviii,  xix, 
53,  60,  61,  100,  105,  323,  327,  337, 
341-441,  448,  490,  511  ff.,  536  f., 
574-578. 

Myth,  149. 

NATURE,  190,  288,  299,  304,  456,  517, 
541 ;  as  locus  of  meanings,  118  ;  as 
object  of  knowledge,  see  Knowl- 
edge ;  as  source  of  knowledge  of 
God,  230-316. 

Necessity  (see  also  Freedom),  29,  152, 
437,  462,  466,  542. 

Negative  aspect  of  religion  (see  also 
Mysticism,  Negative  path,  Religion, 
uniqueness  of),  6,  21  f.,  32,  327, 
421. 

Negative  path,  355,  365,  369-388,  392, 
427,  437  f.,  456. 

Negativity  (see  also  Change),  188. 

Nietzsche,  431  n.,  480,  482,  504,  518. 

Novelty  (see  also  Change,  Creativity), 
167,  363  ff.,  448,  462. 


OBJECTIVITY,  102,  106, 135, 192  f .,  284, 
307  f.,  343;  in  religion,  29,  30,  57, 
78,  150,  152 ;  of  mind,  67,  135,  513. 

Obligation  (see  also  Conscience,  Duty), 
251. 

Observation,  475  f.,  528. 

Odes  of  Solomon,  452  ff. 

Omar  Khayyam,  189,  328,  430. 

Omnipotence,  503. 

Ontological  argument,  301  ff.,  568  ff. 

Optimism,  166,  182. 

Oracles,  364. 

Orgy,  534. 

Oriental  quality  in  religion,  149-151, 
328,  373. 

Originality  (see  also  Creativity),  29, 
365,  447  f .,  450,  565  f . 

Ostwald,  409  n. 

Other-world  (see  also  Immortality), 
5-10. 

PAIN  (see  also  Evil),  128  n.,  218, 491. 

Palmer,  Frederic,  514  n. 

Palmer,  G.  H.,  193,  395. 

Panpsychism,  318. 

Pantheism,  326. 

Particular,  the,  285, 485-524. 

Pascal,  147. 

Passion,  106,  123,  400,  534. 

Passivity,  162,  372,  382  ff.,  413,  419, 
422,  425,  432,  437. 

Peace  (see  also  Feeling,  Attainment). 
65,  66,  72,  218. 

Perception,  85, 120,  121. 

Persecution,  58. 

Personal  religion  (see  also  Mysticism), 
336  f. 

Personality  (see  also  Character,  Indi- 
vidual, Self),  134,  150,  187,  226, 
260  f.,  264,  266,  335-6,  425,  431, 
485-514,  532 ;  of  God,  see  God,  per- 
sonality  of. 

Pessimism,  see  Evil.  Optimism. 

Petrie,  W.  M.  F.,  403  n. 

Philip  of  Alcantara,  536. 

Philosophy  and  religion,  see  Religion. 

Physical  preparation,  372. 

Plato,  483,  563  n.,  577. 

Play,  151. 

Pleasure,  127  ff.,  418-420  422,  429  n., 
435,  534,  547-551. 

Plotinus,  329,  390  n.,  395  n. 

Pluralism  (see  also  Monism,  Independ- 
ence, Unfinishedness),  166  ff.,  292- 
295,  298  f.,  359,  406,  416. 

Poetry  in  religion  (see  also  Literality, 
Symbol),  149,  150,  452. 

Polytheism,  324-326. 


INDEX 


585 


Positive  religion  (see  also  Historical  re- 
ligion, Religion,  particular),  519  ff. 

Postulate  (see  also  Voluntarism),  146, 
152,  153,  101,  251. 

Potential,  see  Energy. 

Power,  love  of,  504,  509,  517 ;  in  Na- 
ture, 210;  supreme,  216-222. 

Pragmatic  method,  4,  0,  10,  105. 

Pragmatism  (see  also  Absolute,  Rela- 
tivity, Voluntarism),  x,  xiii-xviii, 
40  f.,  09-72,  113ff.,  139-102,  196, 
201,  206 ;  in  China,  147  n. 

Prajapati,  102. 

Pratt,  J.  B.,  38,  100,  537. 

Prayer  (see  also  Worship),  152,  190, 
249,  303,  370  f.,  428-441,  445  f.,  479. 

Predicates,  87,  90,  97  f.,  100-104,  320, 
321,  458. 

Prince,  Morton,  531. 

Probability,  107,  214. 

Prophecy,  445. 

Prophetic  consciousnets,  485-614  (esp. 
503),  515-519. 

Providence,  440,  485,  510. 

Pseudo-Dionysius,  355,  395  n. 

Psychology,  43,  45. 

Psychology  of  religion,  8,  18,  28-34, 
54,  59,  145,  341-510. 

Ptah  Hotep,  419,  505. 

Purgation,  372  ff. 

QUANTITY  of  existence,  72,  440. 
Quietism,  382,  380. 

REALISM  (see  also  Independence),  xi, 
282-290,  558-572. 

Reality  (see  also  Absolute,  Substance), 
xiii,  112,  119,  147, 151, 101, 108, 184, 
194,  198,  303-310,489,  502,512,562, 
571 ;  interest  in,  '  purely  theoretical,' 
115,  122  f. 

Reason,  Reasoning  (see  also  Faith, 
Feeling,  Knowledge,  Idea),  88,  90, 
155,  530,  540. 

Reconciliation,  237-239. 

Redemption,  Redeemer  (see  also  Medi- 
ation), 357,  520. 

Reflexion,  470-475,  511. 

Reflexive  turn,  the,  192  ff.,  281. 

Relations,  inner  and  outer,  270, 298, 334. 

Relativity  (see  also  Absolute),  193, 
411  n.,4!4n. 

Religion  and  the  Arts  (see  also  Arts), 
ii,  31,  103,  138;  and  morals,  see 
Morals;  and  philosophy,  304,  342; 
authoritative,  see  Authority,  Historic 
Religion;  evolution  of,  14-23,  41, 
145,  154,  185,  229-240,  317-337, 345, 


458,  519  ff. ;  fruits  of  (see  also  Ood, 
work  of),  chh.  ii,  iii,  xxx-xxxiii,  also 
pp.  0,  237 ;  nature  of,  14,  31,  49,  57, 
72 f.,  105,  137,  141  f.,  153,  238  f.; 
Particular,  positive  (see  also  Institu- 
tion, Historical  religion),  xii,  xviii, 
28,  519  ff.;  propagation  of,  41,  42, 
57,  78,  518  ff.;  psychology  of,  see 
Psychology ;  social  and  political  as- 
pect of  (see  also  State),  0,  11,  12, 17, 
31,  141,  152,  100,  212  f.,  237  f.,  347, 
307,  402  f.,  448  n.,  454,  517  ff.,  578; 
uniqueness,  supremacy  (see  also  Neg- 
ative aspect),  22,  51. 

Renaissance,  513. 

Renunciation,  373,  501,  509. 

Resentment,  145, 154,  224,  239. 

Resignation,  499,  501. 

Revelation,  53,  54,  58,  148,  154,  229, 
302,  433,  445,  447-401. 

Rhythm,  391  ff. 

Rickert,  158,  253. 

Right,  193,  197,  251. 

Rights,  23,  24 ;  religious,  430  ff, 

Risk,  171,  179. 

Rite,  ritual,  345. 

Romanticism,  410,  434. 

Rousseau,  0. 

Royce,  xii,xxii,  158,  200,  240,  248,  249, 
307,  351,  387  n.,498  f.,503,  547,  558. 

Ruysbroeck,  381. 

SABATIER,  A.,  38, 147. 

Sacrifice,  347,  421. 

Salvation  (see  also   Immortality),  16, 

195,  198,  440,  451,  512  f.,  523. 
Schleiermacher,  38,  04,  137. 
Scholastics,  60,  61. 
Schopenhauer,  100. 
Science  (see  also  Knowledge),  42, 173. 

174  ff.,  513. 
Scientific  reaction,  174. 
Scriptures,  445-401. 
Sein  and  Bfwusstsein,  203,  475  n. 
Self  (see  also  Personality,  Substance), 

194,  201  ff.,  241,  244-245,  253,  300, 

412,  414,   430,  472,  483,  542,  501, 

500  f . ;  as  source  of  change,  188  ff. 
Self-consciousness,  150,  201,  235,  252, 

296,  308,  322  n.,  359-360,  383,  419, 

420,  422,  453,  470-477,  527,  561. 
Self-assertion,  29,   146,  359-360,  367, 

375,  419,  436,  4:38,  503  ff. 
Self-preservation  (see  also  Immortality, 

Love  of  life),  49,  106,  203,  366. 
Self-righting,  175. 
Sensation,  25, 155,  285,  286,  301  f.,  313, 

561,  563. 


586 


INDEX 


Sentiment,  530 

Sentimentality,  77,  199,  344. 

Sex  and  religious  feeling,  574-578. 

Shakespeare,  506. 

Silesius,  61. 

Simplicity,  383,  432,  437,  509. 

Sin,  415  n.,  419  n.,  513,  515,  537. 

Sincerity,  418,  437,  438. 

Siva,  186. 

Skepticism,  192,  252. 

Sleep,  397,  420,  533  f .,  536. 

Social   experience,  222,  231-300,  409, 

567  f . ;  and  theoretical  attitude,  116 
Social  evil,  176. 
Social  service,  17. 
Socrates,  505,  512. 
Solipsism,  246. 

Solitude,  271,  299,  402  ff.,  522  n. 
Sorrow  (see  also  Evil),  491. 
Space,  263  f.,  270,  299,  307,  545. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  90,  547,  551  f.,  557. 
Spinoza,  195,  455,  512,  573,  577. 
Spiritism,  231-233,  317-8. 
Starbuck,  73. 
State,  the  (see  also  Religion,  social  and 

political  aspect),  140  f.,  152,  160, 173, 

176,  178,  212,  328,  334  f.,  454,  516, 

520  f.,  523,  563-567,  569-570,  572. 
Stirner,  Max,  430  n. 
Stoicism,  72,  195,  200,  377,  489,  495  f., 

509  f.,  518. 
Strenuousness,  530. 
Sub  consciousness    (see    also  Instinct), 

105-107,  371,  414,  420,  527-538. 
Subject,  retreat  into  the,   100-108,  195, 

etc.,  277,  297. 
Subjectivity,  403  f . 
Substance  (see  also  Reality),  115, 119ff., 

185,  260,  270,  296,  365,  409. 
Suffering  (see  also  Evil),  200. 
Supernature,  see  Other-world. 
Suso,  382.  394. 
Symbol,  4,  75. 
Sympathy,  135,  416. 

TAG,  334. 

Tauler,  370,  373, 379,  380  n.,  382,  575  f . 

Teleological  argument,  305. 

Telepathy,  256-259. 

Temperament,  360,  456,  483. 

Tennyson,  430. 

Teresa,  360,  374  n.,  378,  381,  385,  394, 

478. 
4  That '  and  '  What '  (see  also  Form  and 

Matter),  52,  101,  296,  453. 
Theologia  Germanica,  373,  374,  395  n. 
Theoretical    attitude    (see   also    Idea, 


independence  of  feeling),  109  ff.,  138, 

41o* 

Thompson,  Francis,  507. 

Tiele,  C.  P.,  330,  371. 

Time,  198,  199,  263,  429-430,  512  f., 
545 ;  existence  in,  xvi ;  ideas  of,  86. 

Tolstoy,  423  f.,  447,  466-8,  470,  473. 

Tradition,  353,  450,  480. 

Transcendence,  326. 

Transiency,  390. 

Trilemma  of  knowledge,  252-253. 

Truth  (See  also  Idea,  Idealism,  Knowl- 
edge, Pragmatism,  etc.),  xiii,  61, 102, 
103,  150,  154  ;  inaccessible,  xvi ;  un- 
finished, xvi,  139  ff. 

UNFINISHEDNESS,  x,  xi,  xvi,  xvii,  140. 
Unhappiness,  491  f. 
Union,  388,  390. 

Universal  (see  also  Abstract  Universal, 
Concrete   Universal,  Irrelevant    Uni- 
versal), 280,  420,  428,  451,  506,  544. 
Universal  religion,  520,  523. 

VALUE  (see  also  Good,  Beauty,  Hap- 
piness, Morals,  Pleasure),  xiii,  68, 
125,  ff.,  147  f.,  201  ff.,  esp.  204,  206, 
237,  328,  418-419,  420,435,437,  488, 
490-493,  539-557. 

Vedanta,  351. 

Verification,  279-280. 

Vicarious  happiness,  496  ff.,  510. 

Voluntarism  (see  also  Action-theory, 
Pragmatism,  Will-to-believe),  139- 
162,  250. 

WAR,  virtues  of,  509. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  89. 

Wesley,  John,  361. 

Whole-idea,  94  ff.,  129  ff.,  145, 168,199, 

200, 218, 233, 408-41 1, 415,423,433  f., 

438, 473,  477,  482, 488,  492,  502,  546. 
Will,  140  ff.,  157,  341  ff.,  381,410-427, 

436-438,  440,  456, 486,492,  527, 531, 

572. 

Will  to  believe,  xvi,  140  ff.,  178,  399. 
Will  to  live,  see  Self-preservation. 
Work,  414,  418,  425,  426. 
Worship  (see  also  Prayer),  vi,  xi,  152, 

234,  329,    341-441   (esp.,   418  ff.)f 

491,  522,  536. 
Wundt,  247. 

YOGI,  379. 

ZENO,  86. 
Zeus,  329. 


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